IRELAND CANNOT afford to fulfil its overseas development aid (ODA) targets in the current climate while vital domestic services struggle to access funds, Bloxham Stockbrokers chief economist Alan McQuaid said last night.
He said areas such as education and health badly required capital and the Government could not afford to borrow more money to support services at home and abroad. Speaking during a debate entitled: “Can Ireland still afford to ODA in the current climate”, Mr McQuaid said the “simple reality is that the country had money but it has been blown”.
“[ODA] is not top of people’s priority list – health and education are – and we need to spend what little we have on those areas people consider important.”
Despite a target to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national product on overseas aid by 2012, some €160 million was cut from the budget in the last 18 months.
Mr McQuaid said Government debt would reach some €100 billion by the end of this year and that tough choices in the areas from which spending was withdrawn had to be made.
He said ODA was an obvious choice as it was hard to to justify giving money to outside causes when so many needed it here.
In response, Hans Zomer, director of the NGO association Dóchas, said cutting the overseas aid budget further would be shortsighted. Mr Zomer said Ireland’s reputation internationally had been affected by the initial rejection of the Lisbon Treaty and the Ryan report on sex abuse and that reneging on our aid commitments would be a further blow.
He said Taoiseach Brian Cowen and his predecessor Bertie Ahern had given solemn commitments to the UN on aid spending and that breaking this would be bad for the country on an international level.
