Ireland is on course to meet the United Nations target for overseas aid within the next four years, according to Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern.
However, his Fine Gael opposite number Billy Timmins has queried whether all the aid is reaching its intended recipients.
"Ireland will make significant progress in 2008, putting us firmly on target to reach our 2012 goal. The Government has allocated a record €914 million for Official Development Assistance (ODA) this year," Mr Ahern said.
He said this ensured that "Ireland remains firmly on course to reach the UN aid target of spending 0.7 per cent of Gross National Product by 2012, three years ahead of the date set by our EU partners".
Irish Aid, which is part of the Department of Foreign Affairs, will establish its ninth bilateral aid programme in Malawi this year. The other eight countries, along with aid figures for 2007, are as follows: Ethiopia (€32 million); Lesotho (€9 million); Mozambique (€43 million); Tanzania (€32 million); Uganda (€34 million); Zambia (€22 million); Timor Leste (€4.8 million) and Vietnam (€19.4m).
In April 2007, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported that Ireland recorded the largest international increase in its aid budget, making Ireland the sixth most generous donor per capita.
Only Sweden, Luxembourg, Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark allocated a greater percentage of GNP than Ireland to overseas development.
Mr Ahern said: "The level and internationally recognised quality of Ireland's overseas aid puts us in a position of leadership when it comes to tackling international poverty and its underlying causes."
Ireland's development budget was "100 per cent untied", ie there was no obligation on recipient countries to purchase Irish goods and/or services with the funding they got from Ireland.
Irish NGOs and missionaries would benefit significantly from the increased resources available: Concern, Goal, the Irish Red Cross, Oxfam, Trócaire, Self-Help International and others will receive over €100 million from the Government this year in support of their efforts to combat poverty and suffering. "We will also provide €20 million this year in support of the work of Irish missionaries in the developing world," Mr Ahern said.
Mr Timmins, the Fine Gael spokesman on foreign affairs, said: "I do have a concern that in our attempts to reach the 0.7 per cent of GNP, we may not be sufficiently monitoring where the aid actually ends up. We make a virtue of the fact that aid is untied, however it is unacceptable that some of this money may not be reaching its intended target due to failure on behalf of the recipient governments. This is something Fine Gael will be pursuing in the months ahead."
Mr Timmins added: "Somewhere in the region of $16 billion (€10.8 billion) has been given in aid by the international community to Kenya since the country achieved independence in 1963 and today nearly 55 per cent of the population are living on a couple of dollars a day, which clearly indicates to me that we have to have a foolproof monitoring system in place."
