Goal's John O'Shea is wrong on aid - official

DIRECT OVERSEAS aid to governments is essential to ensure that progress made in developing countries is sustained in the long term, Department of Foreign Affairs secretary general Dermot Gallagher said yesterday.

Mr Gallagher said John O'Shea, founder of the charity Goal, was wrong when he said the Government should bypass governments in developing countries and implement development programmes directly.

"Ireland can not go in to a country in a paternalistic way and take over the running of health or education or whatever," Mr Gallagher said. "It would not be acceptable."

He told the Dáil Public Accounts Committee that Goal was a great organisation and would be receiving €100 million from the Government as part of a five-year programme, but Mr O'Shea was wrong in his view on bypassing local governments.

He said the Department of Foreign Affairs worked with governments by providing assistance at local authority level, through specific departments and through direct assistance to governments' budgets.

"There are potential risks with all of these approaches, as there are in the delivery of aid of any type, but working with government systems is essential to ensuring that progress made can be sustained over the long term," he said.

"What we want to do is to manage and minimise those risks to the greatest possible extent."

In 2006, €814 million was spent in Official Development Assistance, Mr Gallagher said.

Since Ireland became involved in supporting Mozambique, the number of primary schools there had almost quadrupled, the numbers of children at school had risen from 400,000 to five million, maternal mortality had halved, and military expenditure had reduced by three-quarters.

Committee member Tommy Broughan (Lab) said there was a significant amount of dysfunction in tracking Irish aid. He said he had heard that former Zambian president Fredrick Chiluba stole half a million euro while in office and made regular visits to Ireland to "pick up his cheque".

Mr Gallagher said the story was "nonsense" and that the Government did not give budgetary support for Zambia, but only gave support for specific projects.

He also said suggestions that Ireland had "put its head in the sand" in relation to the situation in Tanzania were untrue. Ireland had helped to strengthen audit systems in Tanzania and was the only country with its own auditor in its embassy.

Mr Gallagher said the department had withdrawn funding from three NGOs, two of which were overseas organisations operating in Kenya and South Africa. They had also worked with Irish charity Self Help to improve its governance, he said.

Brendan Rodgers, designate director general of Irish Aid, the department's development agency, said he had not come across any cases of large-scale fraud.

He said he had seen individual cases such as one in north Mozambique where €35,000 in aid was misappropriated. The person was jailed and the department got its money back, he said.

Referring to the Zambian president story, he added: "We never give cheques to politicians."

Comptroller and Auditor General John Purcell said the delivery of Irish aid to developing countries was "consistent with the best principles".