Agency calls for halt to Irish Aid expansion

Development agency Goal has called on the Government to halt immediately the expansion of the Irish Aid programme in the light of an audit report of the Department of Foreign Affairs.

The report, revealed yesterday in The Irish Times, found deficiencies in the management of overseas spending and raised concerns about plans to decentralise the programme to Limerick at a time of massive expansion.

Fine Gael accused the Government of incompetence and of failing to put in place safeguards against fraud, while Labour called for an all-party review of the plan to move Irish Aid to Limerick.

John O'Shea, chief executive of Goal, said that any further increase in spending was putting at serious risk taxpayers' money. "It has been clear for some time that the size of the aid budget is such that it has become unmanageable by the department.

"Extraordinarily large donations to institutions, UN agencies and others in recent weeks and months reflect panic on the part of Minister of State Conor Lenihan and his colleagues," said Mr O'Shea.

"Those with the deepest pockets of all - the corrupt Third World governments and their equally corrupt institutions of government - are benefiting most from this situation."

Labour's finance spokeswoman Joan Burton said the aid programme would be stretched and probably compromised as a result of the loss of experience of aid specialists unwilling to make the move to Limerick.

According to Ms Burton, yesterday's report confirmed that the proposed "wholesale" transfer of Irish Aid to Limerick risked undermining the entire programme.

Decentralisation could work, she said, but it was not necessarily the answer for all sections of government.

Fine Gael's foreign affairs spokesman Bernard Allen accused the Government of failing to put in place the necessary checks and balances to protect against fraud in the aid programme.

This was in spite of the potential for fraud in the programme being "sky high".

Mr Allen said it had come as no surprise that the audit report had identified major deficiencies in the way that the aid programme was managed.