I too welcome the delegations representing their constituent organisations. I particularly welcome Sr. Noelle and was interested to hear of the administrative developments regarding the life-altering work of 800 missionaries in Africa, India and beyond who are now being helped by Development Co-operation Ireland to develop their own capacity to draw down funds. One of the things I encountered directly when I visited Africa, and the missionary orders in particular, as Minister of State with the President, was their stated and obvious concern that they did not have the financial, administrative and professional wherewithal to draw down moneys that were available for them through Irish Government funding. I am glad that mechanism has been put in place.
Following what Sr. Noelle has said, if one is looking for an area where capacity can be met, where the money can go for a ready font of activity, one could do no better than the Irish missionaries abroad. The work they have been doing for many years, frequently unnoticed, except by the people benefiting from the fabulous work they do in Africa and beyond, is greatly underfunded. I noticed as well, as Minister, that their requests for funding were always modest. When I met them in Africa I was tempted to tell them to ask for more because more money is available to fund their activities. Because of the type of people they are, they are grateful for every pound they get, which they make go far in the great work they do in looking after the sick and educating girls, in particular, in Africa and beyond. They have expanded their own horizons and confidence in terms of what they can do, and they are the people to do it. I am glad that particular institutional change has come about.
I am a little concerned when we talk about capacity because it may be symptomatic of people looking for excuses not to reach the UN target. This committee must be very firm on that issue, as we have been firm throughout. All the parties support the Government's initiative, as promised by the Taoiseach in 2000 at the Millennium Summit. We all hold firm behind that solemn commitment made by Ireland to the international community. To allow ourselves to be diverted into the capacity argument is to allow ourselves to be thrown off course by persons who are looking for excuses not to reach the target.
I welcome the opportunity to talk about and hear confirmation from all the NGOs here that they have the capacity to absorb more money if it is forthcoming from the Irish Government. Poor countries certainly have a capacity to absorb it. All our bilateral programmes in our six priority countries in Africa have huge capacity to absorb extra money.
We should think about the plight of Ethiopia, which is recovering from a war and recurrent famine. It could use double the aid. It has a horrendous growth in population in terms of the needs of the people. That country has plenty of capacity to take our money. We have a long-standing relationship Ethiopia. We also have long-standing and acclaimed programmes with our other five priority countries in Africa, all of which could do with more money, particularly when there is a fall-off from other countries.
As has been said, the focus has gone from Africa. Billions of dollars are going into Iraq and the so-called war against terrorism. I understand there is despair in the UN that Africa is now taking second last or last place to all the other countries of focus in the world in the so-called war against terrorism. Ireland has always had a focus on Africa. We reviewed our programme following the Cabinet decision, which has not been reversed — I am glad it was reinstated by the Tánaiste publicly and in the Dáil. That decision stands, unless it is reversed by another Cabinet decision.
When we reviewed the programme I chaired a high-level committee to examine how we will spend this money and plan, in a programmed way, to expand the budget. It is a major expansion of the budget. It was politically driven and has huge political support. The social partners were consulted. The people who deal with the poor in Ireland were consulted, as were the trade unions, business, employers, the churches and everybody who is part of the fabric of what Ireland represents. There is a general cross-party consensus here that this is the way to go and this is part of what Ireland represents.
We examined all of that. The high-level committee sat for nearly a year consulting with the officials in Development Co-operation Ireland, or Ireland Aid as it was then called, and we worked out how we would spend the money. We examined the problems and challenges involved in what is essentially a doubling of our programme from €500 million now to approximately €1 billion by the year 2007. We worked that out and it is listed here. It meant increasing the capacity of DCI to manage an increased level of funding. It considered the capacity of our partner countries and that of the NGOs to absorb it. It considered the areas we should prioritise, and we decided to stay with Africa and also go into Central America with the help of NGOs. We talked about expanding and upgrading our embassies in our bilateral countries so that there would be a sufficient number of people in the field to monitor and ensure accountability for that money.
We examined major issues of corruption as well as accountability issues. We spent months examining accountability issues because there was so much concern in that regard. This is taxpayers' money and we have to make sure it is all accounted for. We put in place extra auditing mechanisms. We have to account for this money to the Comptroller and Auditor General and to this Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs. All the NGOs were involved in that. We decided to keep our focus on primary health care, education and sanitation, the most basic services, and to stay with the poorest communities in the poorest countries. We were not going off course. We had a plan. We still have a plan.
The issue of capacity is being thrown out as some sort of excuse for not reaching the target. We should see it for what it is. There is no incapacity in the developing world. There is chronic poverty in the developing world. There is more humanitarian need, as has been said, in Darfur, Afghanistan and Africa. There is still famine, conflict and huge need in those countries, and there are millions of AIDS orphans. The Ireland Aid review committee considered this, took advice from the OECD and other experts and thought of strategic investment in multilateral agencies. The review recommended investment in multilateral agencies, including the UNDP, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the World Health Organisation and UNAIDS. It is a global fund for AIDS. There is no shortage of placeswhere this money can go.
What is at issue now is that somebody is backsliding on this commitment, but this committee has made it clear that we will not stand for it. It is highly possible that we can reach this target, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs should be the champion for that target. Of all Ministers, the Minister with responsibility for the aid programme should be its champion. The Minister of State, Deputy Tom Kitt, never dropped the ball on this issue. He never suggested that at any time. When I was Minister of State, I initiated this commitment at Cabinet. The Minister of State, Deputy Tom Kitt, followed it through. We kept on course and even though there were volume increases, our gross was such that we were being thrown off target by our own wealth.
This is not really a problem; it is a challenge to this Government to hold to its commitment to the world community. It is not just about our reputation at the UN. It is about that to some extent, but it is more about the fact that it is the right way to proceed. The people of Ireland support it and the elected representatives in this Oireachtas support it. I cannot understand why we are now talking about capacity, with the great needs of Africa so obvious. Everybody in this room has travelled to Africa and seen where the money is being spent. We have seen the life-altering results of that money. We should not be thrown off course by issues such as corruption.
Corruption is actually a development in itself. It comes with a very fallible and wounded continent, which has a legacy of oppression, colonisation, chronic under-development, lack of investment and terrible debt. All of us know the enmeshed nature of development, that it is not a perfect science and that many of the countries we are dealing with are emerging from conflict. They are emerging democracies. Many of their constitutions are dated 1991 or 1994. Those of us in the west have had hundreds of years of democracy and can easily look down our noses at emerging democracies, which have governance and corruption issues, but we have to remember that is part of their development. Part of our aid funding has to go to those areas to help build stronger democracies in Africa and to get education and proper administrative systems into those countries. Anyone who has reviewed our programmes over a number of years has found that our model of aid comes through with shining colours because we have the proper model based on respectful partnerships with emerging democracies. NGOs have a major part to play in that. I believe in the capacity of Africans to govern themselves if they are assisted. We must have that optimistic view of the human beings who are Africans who, if helped and resourced and not abandoned by the rest of the world, can recover from the legacy which has befallen them through no fault of their own.
The humanitarian assistance budget, which is a type of floating fund, is always provided for because we do not know what humanitarian emergency will arise. It is important that we have that resource available at any time, which can be drawn down to respond to an unpredictable emergency. The nature of humanitarian disasters is that they are unpredictable. There are still famines. A horrendous situation has been unfolding in Darfur. I am sure the Minister for Foreign Affairs has been generous in his response to that situation, but those who have been observing the situation in Sudan for many years will recall that we had an aid programme in Sudan at one point but we could not continue it because of the war. One cannot continue an aid programme on a bilateral basis when an oppressive war is being fought over many years. We pulled out of the bilateral programme there and changed our form of assistance to that of helping humanitarian agencies on the ground to help the poorest of the poor and to respond to the chronic needs there.
As a committee, we must be sure-footed on this area. Having listened to the evidence here which is wholly in favour of reaching the UN target, it confirms our own robust confirmation at a previous meeting calling on the Government to hold to that commitment. What is needed is predictable growth and we already have an upward schedule of predictable growth, as indicated if we are to reach the target by 2007. At the very least we should reach the target of 0.5% by 2005 and then move upwards and onwards. What we need is a budgetary envelope over the next three-year period which will see us reach that committed target. The country has never been better placed to do that. We are in a period of continuous economic growth. The political will to achieve that should exist. There is certainly political and wider community support for this commitment. We should hold to and not turn our backs to the commitment we made in our full senses by way of a Cabinet decision in respect of which there was no dissent. I do not know from where the notion came that we have a capacity problem and that we will not be able to spend the money. The most telling question is from where that idea is coming.
