Members of an Oireachtas committee have described as scandalous the EU's failure to disburse billions of euro in overseas aid.
The EU has accumulated €20 billion in unspent aid funds over the past decade, the development sub-committee of the Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs heard yesterday.
An unspecified amount of this was contributed by the Irish Government. Ireland channels about €40 million a year through the EU, and about €12 million a year of this goes to the European Development Fund, which has borne the brunt of criticism for its inefficiency.
The Government was "very unhappy" about bureaucratic delays in spending EU aid, the director-general of Ireland Aid, Mr David Donoghue, told the committee.
"We have worked hard to get an acceleration of the delivery of these programmes and there have been some signs of improvement," he said.
Mr Donoghue said Ireland paid only what was required of it and no more because of its concerns. The Government planned to use next year's EU presidency to push for further improvements.
Labour's Mr Michael D. Higgins described the EU's failure to spend the money available as a scandal. His colleague, Senator Brendan Ryan, condemned the "ineptitude" involved.
Ireland Aid is to come under scrutiny from next week when a top-level OECD group comes to Dublin at the start of a major review of its programmes, the committee heard. The group will include development experts from Belgium and Switzerland.
However, Mr Higgins said the OECD had a "narrow ideological ethos" and he asked why UN experts were not carrying out the review.
