Ireland eight years late to meet UN 0.7% GNP goal

THE Government yesterday signed up to a new EU timeframe aimed at delivering 0.7% of GNP for overseas development aid by 2015 - a full eight years after the original deadline.

Controversially, the original Government commitment to the United Nations target, made by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern before the UN General Assembly in 2000, should have been met by 2007.

In a meeting of the EU General Affairs and External Relations Council in Brussels yesterday, Ireland and the other 24 EU member states signed off on a deal which will see a two-tier commitment to delivering the 0.7% goal.

While the ten new accession States have committed to lower targets - 0.17% of GNP by 2010 growing to 0.33% by 2015 - the fifteen remaining States, including Ireland, have agreed to reach an interim target of 0.51% by 2010 growing to the full 0.7% by 2015.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner from Brussels yesterday, Development Minister Conor Lenihan said the agreement was a historic one.

“For once Europe is taking a lead on this issue and speaking with one voice. It is a historic and positive day and it sends a very strong signal,” he said.

Minister Lenihan said the agreement copper fastened Ireland’s aid commitment and indicated that the Government was hoping to reach the 0.7% by 2012 subject to Cabinet approval.

However, on the very day that the EU agreement was reached, civil servants in Minister Lenihan’s own department warned that decentralisation would scupper the Government’s ability to meet the UN target.

Under the Government’s decentralisation plan development specialists in the Department of Foreign Affairs are to move to Limerick in 2007 - a move they say will destroy their ability to function effectively.

IMPACT official Angela Kirk said decentralisation would see 90% of the Department’s development staff, including virtually the entire top management, leave the organisation.

Raising the issue at a public meeting on a proposed Government white paper on development in Dublin last night Ms Kirk said: “There are two possible outcomes if the Government insists on pressing ahead with decentralisation. Either desperate people in the developing world will continue to be denied badly needed assistance, or the Irish taxpayer will have no guarantee that the money is being well spent or properly targeted,” she said.