The new Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr Conor Lenihan, denied that he had abandoned the Government's commitment on overseas development aid.
Mr Lenihan, in his first ministerial Question Time, was challenged by the new Fine Gael foreign affairs spokesman, Mr Bernard Allen, to say if he was retreating from the Taoiseach's "solemn commitment in 2000" that the Republic would contribute 0.7 per cent of GNP by 2007.
Mr Lenihan replied: "That remains the target of the Government and was arrived at because of a Cabinet decision. If he was listening in recent days and weeks to both the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach, that target remains in place. We intend to achieve it in line with the Government decision.
"Some people seem to have mistakenly formed the opinion that I was reneging on that commitment.
"I simply expressed a certain amount of scepticism about our ability to reach the target within the given timeframe.
"The deputy should not be under any illusion: the timeframe for the commitment remains there."
Mr Lenihan said the Republic was in joint seventh place in terms of per-capita spending on aid, well above the European average.
"The negotiations for the Estimates for 2005 are currently under way. The Government is committed to building quickly on the substantial progress to date in order to achieve the UN target of 0.7 per cent," he said.
"The figures for 2002 and 2003 were lower than we would have hoped. However, this was against the background of the economic slowdown which affected all areas of public expenditure."
Mr Lenihan said the Republic should be proud of what had been achieved in its development aid programme.
"We are regularly evaluated by our peers in the OECD. The most recent evaluation in 2003 concluded that our development programme is of the highest quality. The taxpayer is getting good value for money," he said.
Mr Ruairí Quinn (Labour, Dublin South East) pressed Mr Lenihan to say if the Government's commitment to delivering on benchmarking was as solid and as clear as the Minister's commitment to use every effort to reach 0.7 per cent of GNP.
Mr Lenihan said he was not the Minister for Finance, and he would not make pronouncements on his behalf.
