We hear so much about the global economy these days that people would be forgiven for thinking that everybody lived in it. Yet, as Liz O'Donnell reminded us yesterday, more than half the world's population continues to live in abject poverty. That's three billion people living on about £1 a day.
These people, with few resources and even less economic power, seldom figure in the calculations of marketing gurus or investment fund managers. And now, it seems, even the aid donors are deserting them.
Aid to the developing world has fallen to the lowest level since statistics were compiled in 1950. The rich, it appears, have no desire to turn swords into plough shares.
Only Ireland is bucking this trend, increasing its support for the Third World at a time when, as Ms O'Donnell noted at the launch of the Reality of Aid report, all our neighbours are "backsliding". But this is largely explained by the fact that historically we have been at the bottom of the heap in terms of aid spending.
Perhaps development aid is facing extinction. There are those, not all of them on the right wing of the economic spectrum, who believe private investment can replace aid. Opening up the markets of the rich countries will ensure economic growth for all countries, they say.
These trends are already well advanced. The flow of private finance to developing countries has tripled in five years and is now four times as large as aid flows. The problem is that private investment has tended to go to countries like China and India and not to the poorest countries in, say, sub-Saharan Africa. And, within countries, it has tended to widen the gap between rich and poor.
The problems of inefficiency and mis-direction in existing aid programmes are well-recognised. Many of these problems have been tackled, but not all. The report, for example, finds that the EU fails to spend half the money it allocates to development co-operation. It finds that member-states do not seriously try to improve aid.
And, the report adds, most official aid does not reach people living in poverty, in spite of all the rhetoric of governments on the issue.
But, increasingly, aid programmes are being focused on those who need them, and are being developed in co-operation with the recipients. This is particularly true of the Irish aid programme, which has moved away from a paternalist approach to a partnership model.
The report is emphatic that aid can work, when properly applied. One example: this year, polio has been eradicated from the Western hemisphere with the help of US aid funding.
In future, though, there is likely to be more emphasis on advocacy work at home, to persuade people in the developed countries to agree to more fair play in trade and economic relations for the Third World. Debt relief is also increasingly seen as a way of helping the developing countries help themselves.
Public support for increasing aid remains very high, especially in Ireland. But, as Ms O'Donnell conceded, the public's understanding of the issues is often very low. This is especially true in the case of complex emergencies or the need for long-term sustainable development.