Slash foreign aid contribution

mikemac

Afaik, we are commited to giving 0.7% of GBP in foreign aid.
Did we commit to a treaty or can we go back on this?

According to this link, Ireland spent 815 million euro in 2007 on foreign aid. Seems a collasal sum to me and I'm wondering who it be better spent at home on education or the health service.
http://www.rte.ie/arts/2007/1116/bono.html

Where that money goes and does it get swallowed by corruption, I don't realy know.
But there is no doubt that some of that money is wasted and ends up in a Swiss bank account.
And we have given money since before Live Aid and we can give money for the next twenty years but I don't see the problems going away.
Maybe let the former colonial powers take more responsibility if you feel it is our duty to help.

So, imo if you want to give to charity it should an individual choice and when you pay taxes it's a reasonable expectation the government will spend them in the state or in the EU. We never got a choice on this.

I fully expect to be flamed by some but it's an interesting topic, any opinions?

gurramok

Giving aid money to nuclear powers like India/Pakistan except in disaster situations is wrong imho.
Some of the former colonial powers have cancelled some 3rd world countries debt due to campaigning which i think goes a long way to helping the citizens of an affected country rather than throwing money at the problem.

Is there public knowledge on where this 0.7% goes to?

davejones

gurramok wrote: »

Giving aid money to nuclear powers like India/Pakistan except in disaster situations is wrong imho.
Some of the former colonial powers have cancelled some 3rd world countries debt due to campaigning which i think goes a long way to helping the citizens of an affected country rather than throwing money at the problem.

Is there public knowledge on where this 0.7% goes to?

That's a very good question!
800 or so million euro is an awful lot of money.

Time Magazine

Wail a little louder, it will aid to the hysteria. We're spending €15bn a year on health. Do you not think this is enough?

40% of the world live on less than $2 a day. Really, cop onto yerselves. It's literally less than 1% of our income. It's about as much, as a nation, we spend on the Lotto.

Gurramok, you'll be glad to hear we don't give to nuclear powers except in disaster situations. We have "partnered" with these countries, places like Zambia and Lesotho where the life expectancy is under 40.

Thankfully, the government are smart enough to see that as little money as possible is wasted. The partnered countries were specifically chosen, can be un-partnered easily and with Irish Aid very visible in those countries, the people will know why if they up and leave. They spend the money in the least-corruptible ways possible. Case in point: my next door neighbour (I live in college in Dublin) is Ethiopian and is having his fees and board paid for by Irish Aid as part of a Human Resource Improvement Programme. The idea? He learns his trade here and goes home. That's hard to corrupt.

And we've already reneged on our word of 0.7% on GNP - which we agreed to as part of the UN's Millennium Development Goals, saying that the five thousand under-5s who die each day of diseases like diarrhea that they can wait another five years before we give them what we said we would.

Jimbo

Its almost unimaginable, us, a wealthy first world country, giving 0.7% of our money to starving children. OUTRAGOUS! Grow the hell up people. The more people have, the more selfish they get. It should be alot more than 0.7%.

davejones

micmclo wrote: »

Afaik, we are commited to giving 0.7% of GBP in foreign aid.
Did we commit to a treaty or can we go back on this?

According to this link, Ireland spent 815 million euro in 2007 on foreign aid. Seems a collasal sum to me and I'm wondering who it be better spent at home on education or the health service.
http://www.rte.ie/arts/2007/1116/bono.html

Where that money goes and does it get swallowed by corruption, I don't realy know.
But there is no doubt that some of that money is wasted and ends up in a Swiss bank account.
And we have given money since before Live Aid and we can give money for the next twenty years but I don't see the problems going away.
Maybe let the former colonial powers take more responsibility if you feel it is our duty to help.

So, imo if you want to give to charity it should an individual choice and when you pay taxes it's a reasonable expectation the government will spend them in the state or in the EU. We never got a choice on this.

I fully expect to be flamed by some but it's an interesting topic, any opinions?

Yeah you got Flamed:)

Jimbo

Burn

gilroyb

That 0.7% commitment was signed up to in the 1970's by all countries. So far I think that at most five countries in the world have met it. Ireland isn't one of them. We plan to reach it by some time around 2012 or 2015.

Irish Aid chooses select partner countries carefully and tries to make a real difference in these few countries. It is one area where Ireland can make a major impact on the world stage because of the abject poverty of those it works with. If you want some information on it you can read the departments own website, http://www.irishaid.gov.ie/about.asp. Alternatively you could study the issue and be frequently surprised at the frequency of the references to Ireland as a real force for positive and accountable change in developing countries.

mikemac

davejones wrote: »

Yeah you got Flamed:)

I knew I would but it's good to have debate.

Tbh, I'm impressed with the goverment after reading posts here.
I thought they got 800 million and found maybe 50 countries and wrote a cheque and that's the last we ever saw of it.
Throwing money at a problem......like our health service you might say

It's good to have it monitored so closely in a few select countries.

However in an economic downturn it's a tempting place to cut and I would not be suprised if it was.

Jimbo, it may be only 0.7% to you but it's over 800 million which is a hell of lot of money all the same.

Jimbo

Can you imagine the amount of lives you could save, the amount of suffering you could quell with €800 million per annum?

Time Magazine

micmclo wrote: »

However in an economic downturn it's a tempting place to cut and I would not be suprised if it was.

On this point, there are separate accounts for "non-negotiable" expenditure like the wages of the judiciary. Fine Gael have called for development aid placed in this bracket.

InFront

As Ibid pointed out, suggesting that we are spending too much money on overseas development aid is ridiculous since it is not a whole lot of money when offset against the cause, all things considered.

My only concern might be how effectively that money is being spent. Some people might recall that following the Asian Tsunami, the government gave €18 million to 34 different organisations - each of course with their individual administration costs. Indeed the aid program itself has been chronically understaffed, with administration costs that have been considered to be "too low" (~1%). When you have badly administered central funds being spread out to organisations with high individual admin. costs, that's a pretty effective way of losing money.

However, I understand that the Government have now invested in a management firm to look more specifically at how the money is spent, thus hopefully maximising effect from the funds.

Mr.Micro

When we were considered a third world country not so long ago,we received EU grants in the millions for development and farming ,year in and out .We took it all,no questions asked and I believe much of it never saw the light of day as it was purloined ,hence the lack of infrastructure that such money was for.

Who are we now to resent helping others less fortunate than ourselves .Yes some of it may be corruptly taken and so on ,(no strangers to corruption here are we?) but our intentions are good and thats what matters .

Mick86

jimbo78 wrote: »

Its almost unimaginable, us, a wealthy first world country, giving 0.7% of our money to starving children. OUTRAGOUS! Grow the hell up people. The more people have, the more selfish they get. It should be alot more than 0.7%.

How much finds it's way to hungry children and how much into the Swiss Bank accounts of Third World Dictators?

Jimbo

I agree they need to be very careful what they do with the money, but that a terrible excuse to reduce the amount of foreign aid we give

gandalf

It would make more sense to cut the wastage in the civil service than cut foreign aid. I think the very idea that a thread like this was started speaks volumes about how selfish this country is getting.

gbh

Well the OP raises an interesting and long debated question, is aid any good and what conditions if any should be put on aid. Clearly you have to be very careful when you give aid to a country that you know what the situation is in that country. An example of aid that went disastrously wrong was the aid the French government under Mitterand gave to the Hutu government in Rwanda, both before and after the genocide. Clearly giving money to a corrupt regime could lead to the strengthening of that regime as happened with Mobutu and which in turn lead to the wars to overthrow him.

And throwing aid money at the problems will not help either. It is not enough to pay for healthcare, education or even famine relief when as used to be the problem with countries like Ethopia or Erithrea, they were run by dictators who were more interested in spening money on war and feeding their armies than feeding their people. You have to try and get those governments to act responsibily first.

So 0.7% sounds good and it sounds popular. But you need to start looking for governments in the developing world to get their act together before you give them even more aid. It would be like throwing good money after bad if not.

Time Magazine

Honestly, gbh, do you think the people in Irish Aid are that stupid? Do you know anything about what they do?

Crash

Ah now, Ibid, to be honest, with the high admin costs and the general apathy that people have towards the current government re: money handling, you can understand some skepticism as to how they hand out their money.

For instance, i have no issue with the .7 percent, but would like to know how it breaks down and what areas it goes to, and everyones entitled to know that. on top of that, i'd personally like to know how much of that money goes to admin costs and how much makes it way down to the people, cus charities can be an easy way to make big wages.

InFront

çrash_000 wrote: »

i'd personally like to know how much of that money goes to admin costs

At the moment it's about 1.2%, though I think that's projected to about double in the coming year as a result of a white paper outlining how to better manage the aid fund to minimise "investment" in inefficient NGOs.

edanto

Yeah man, real easy places to make big wages.

fxks sake.

There aren't many industries, nonprofit and movies are two that come to mind, where people give up their free time to work together to do something.

What does that tell you? There's huge competition for jobs with charities that pay enough to earn a crust and you can be sure that most of the people in the top jobs would earn well more applying the same management skills to a forprofit enterprise.

Same time, I welcome micmclo's thread - there's not a lot of media coverage of where the aid goes (although Far Away Up Close is moving to prime time next season), but my own experience of it is that it's well spent.

It goes without saying that throwing money at a problem won't make it go away, and the problem of the vast inequalities in wealth distribution need a political fix - but that requires more people to give a sh1t and take some action - if they want to. This year Irish Aid have increased the amount that they're spending on awareness in Ireland, but it's still the type of information that you really have to seek out. The big stories aren't really in the news in any great details.

Here's an example. Can you imagine if 6,000 children died around the world tomorrow because of a problem with a contaminated vaccine? Big news, right?

Well, why in the hell isn't it news that a similar amount of kids die every day because they don't have immunisation? Let's be clear - no-one is saying that the third of the world that get by on two euros or less a day should all be given apartments with balconeys and stayplations, just that as a society, we should go out of our way to make sure that everyone has some basic entitlements and opportunities.

And that's what the eight hundred million or so gets spent on. If anyone thinks that money, on the whole, is wasted, you should really get out of the West and go visit a 'developing' country.

/rant

sovtek

Mick86 wrote: »

How much finds it's way to hungry children and how much into the Swiss Bank accounts of Third World Dictators?

How much of the health budget finds it way into the pockets of the upper echelons of the HSE?

Fratton Fred

We could bin a few of the Tribunals, that would save a fortune. Then we could cut over emploment and under utilisation in the Public Sector, that would save abit more.

cavedave

Ibid
We're spending €15bn a year on health. Do you not think this is enough?

Thankfully, the government are smart enough to see that as little money as possible is wasted.

The government cannot spend money efficiently on our health care system so they are unlikely to be able to spend money successfully on someone elses.

I am with Adam Smith on this one. We should remove all trade taxes with the third world as that is likely to be a lot more efficient then taxing their trade then giving them back this money after it travels through two sets of governments.

gbh

Of course western politicians play a very cynical game on this. On the one hand they want to be popular with our farmers and subsidise them. On the other they give aid to the third world.

The Irish Aid people may not be that stupid, i didn't say that. I was talking in general that Aid has to be targetted in the right way. Unfortunately I only see Aid plugging gaps in developing world budgets. You look at countries like Malawi which is dirt poor, yet recently every one of the top judges, quite a number really, were awarded state cars to keep them from going on strike. In no developed country in the world is any of the judiciary givin publicly funded cars.

In Swaziland the king uses public money to build vast palaces. Yet there is no free press as there is in ireland to criticise him

There was another example recently of a country getting aid, but then spending a lot of money on a military air defence system.

The problem here is that Irish people are not getting value for money. Aid must be an investment with returns. The increased spend mustn't be to continually plug the budgets of countries where there is no real reform of the political system.

edanto

The examples you're quoting sound like serious wastes of money and abuse of trust and we can all agree that they're bad.

In terms of measuring the 'return' of the investment in aid - how would you propose that the impact of aid is measured?

If you were in charge of the aid programme, which countries would you cut off from Irish Aid, why, and then where would you spend the money?

cavedave

The congo is 1/60 as wealthy as the USA
because of education it is 1/2 as wealthy
because of infrastructure it is 1/2 as wealthy
the difference between being 1/60th as wealthy and 1/4 is caused by corruption.

It is impossible for an outside country to fix a corrupt government, police service, legal system etc. What you can do is free up trade coming from all countries so you are not contributing to the poverty of these countries. You could base aid based on how corrupt a country is to encourage honesty but if a dictator is willing to impovrish his people he is unlikely to stop if the incentive to do so is that you will make his people less poor.

djpbarry

micmclo wrote: »

Jimbo, it may be only 0.7% to you but it's over 800 million which is a hell of lot of money all the same.

€813 million per annum works out at about €3.69 per week for every person in the country. You couldn't buy a pint in a Dublin pub with that. Do you still think it's a "hell of a lot of money"?

walshb

djpbarry wrote: »

€813 million per annum works out at about €3.69 per week for every person in the country. You couldn't buy a pint in a Dublin pub with that. Do you still think it's a "hell of a lot of money"?

I do and that's not really a fair comparison is it.
How many in Ireland actually earn money when
expenses are taken out, like food, bills, mortgage etc etc..
How many people work in Ieland?
There are serious problems here in Ireland and I'm
sick to the teeth hearing about cutbacks everywhere.
Ireland is simply being suckered into all this
foreign aid by the Bono's, Geldof's GOAL's, Concern's
and Clinton's of this world. Its all big big business.
It's not IMO genuine and all it's doing is causing
trouble in the third world. Think how far 800+ million
cold go i this country. There are fo starters hundreds of
hmeless people on our island. Woud that money or even
part of it not be better spent elsewhere??

And why can't South Africa give some of its
vast fortunes to eradicate poverty for its neighbors.
Why can't India set aside some of its massive wealth
to alleviating 'poverty' on its land etc etc

jonny72

walshb wrote: »

I do and that's not really a fair comparison is it.
There are serious problems here in Ireland and I'm
sick to the teeth hearing about cutbacks everywhere.
Ireland is simply being suckered into all this
foreign aid by the Bono's, Geldof's GOAL's, Concern's
and Clinton's of this world. Its all big big business.
It's not IMO genuine and all it's doing is causing
trouble in the third world. Think how far 800+ million
cold go i this country. There are fo starters hundreds of
hmeless people on our island. Woud that money or even
part of it not be better spent elsewhere??

And why can't South Africa give some of its
vast fortunes to eradicate poverty for its neighbors.
Why can't India set aside some of its massive wealth
to alleviating 'poverty' on its land etc etc

Then go out with a placard and start protesting about it, saying you want the money earmarked for Africa to go to Irish needs. The government (pushed by others of course) is saying - we are gonna take a tiny little percentage of your paycheck and give it to starving impoverished people who can't moan about crap on messageboards. I can't see why anyone has a problem with that.

walshb

I'd probably get arrested, dare I say anything negative about Africa!!!!