ONE OF the ironies of current Irish economic growth is that it has not resulted in a windfall of generosity towards those less fortunate.
For years, charities prospered in spite of - some might even say because of - Ireland's relative poverty. But now that the boom times have arrived, most are finding it harder rather than easier to obtain donations.
Aid agencies operating in the developing world are presented with an even broader set of challenges. International competition is stiffer than ever, income from most Western governments is in decline, and their operating environment is changing rapidly.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the Irish aid agencies are in a period of retrenchment. Concern has just laid off 10 staff and is reviewing its structures. GOAL last year shut down many of its overseas operations, laying off 42 staff in the process. And Trocaire feels obliged to employ professional fund-raisers to target new sources.
Ireland still rates as one of the most generous countries in the world in terms of voluntary donations, but the massive growth seen in the 1970s and 1980s is unlikely to be repeated. All three agencies have seen a fall in donations and income from other sources.
The National Lottery has set the tone for a new type of charity, where the donor expects a return for money given to good causes. At the same time, the decline in Mass-going is bound to affect organisations like Trocaire, which rely heavily on the Catholic church network for fund-raising.
Amid signs of growing "donor fatigue", the public is showing less patience with the seemingly intractable problems of the Third World. The average television viewer distinguishes little between a dead Rwandan and a dead Liberian; he or she just wants the problem solved, and is sometimes willing to contribute money to this end.
But the emergencies confronting many developing countries are increasingly complex, and less amenable to quick fixes. Rwanda's problems, for example, cannot be solved with a few truckloads of food aid, however welcome these might be.
The social, political, human rights and judicial challenges of that country and others suffering internal conflict require a longer-term response involving a sustained input of resources.
This work is not camera-friendly, however, so it is harder to "sell" back home in the developed world. It poses security risks and can be derailed at any moment; there is a danger of this happening in Rwanda at present.
In all this, it is possible to overlook the achievements of development aid. The data available suggest that countries in the developing world are getting richer and the people in them are better educated and living longer.
Child deaths have been halved; malnutrition rates have been reduced by 30 per cent; and the percentage of rural families with access to safe water has risen from less than 10 per cent to more than 60 per cent.
Even the catastrophic famines of the 1980s may be a thing of the past. The international organisations have learned from their mistakes in Ethiopia and Somalia and have better early warning systems in place. National governments place more emphasis on food security. Bangladesh, for example, no longer suffers from the periodic famines it endured up to recently.
The problem is that the overall number of people living in poverty is increasing as populations expand. Absolute poverty is increasingly concentrated in specific regions, such as west Africa and south Asia (including India) and China.
If population growth is undoing the achievements of aid, surely this poses a challenge to the Irish aid agencies, which up to now have tended to duck the population issue?
It is odd that Irish aid agencies, some of them with world-class reputations, should be feeling the pinch at a time when government aid is rising so steeply. Development assistance has grown threefold in five years, to £122 million this year. However, the biggest beneficiary of this trend has been official Irish Aid, mostly in Africa.
Elsewhere, aid spending has been falling. The recent OECD report showed that expenditure dropped in 16 out of 21 western countries. Governments still channel large amounts of money through international agencies in the EU and the UN, although these have been shown to be notoriously bureaucratic and wasteful.
Outside Ireland, there is a trend towards privatising aid, by directing it through NGOs, but more and more of this funding is going to agencies actually based in developing countries. Indeed, in some of these countries, there is also a growing hostility to northern NGOs.
These changes pose challenges for the Irish agencies. Securing stable, long-term sources of funding is an obvious priority. But NGOs are also looking at the possibility of greater specialisation. Oxfam, for example, has become a specialist in water supply while Medecins sans Frontieres, though controversial in many other ways, is a recognised leader in emergency health.
The question of alliances with other agencies also needs to be examined.
It is estimated that about 30,000 Irish people have worked in the developing World as workers or missionaries. This country has a good reputation for delivering untied aid to the poorest of the poor, largely through the efforts of the NGOs. Surely tightly run aid agencies staffed by committed volunteers remain the most effective and cost-effective way of maintaining this reputation?
