Catholic ethos may be holding back Ireland’s overseas aid policy

One of the leaders of Easter Rising from Dun Laoghaire was Roger Casement who had studied and reported on the conditions in Congo and in the Amazon region when he wrote to his friend Edmond Morel affirming that: “Tackling Leopold in Africa has set in motion a big movement -- it must be a movement of human liberation all the world over”.

It is difficult to dismiss the probability that the policy of the Irish Aid and the NGOs it funds is influenced and constrained by the Catholic ethos. How else can their lack of concrete, practical support for population planning policy be explained?

This Catholic ethos seems to govern policy of The Development Corporation Division (DCD), one of the 11 divisions within the Department of Foreign Affairs which is responsible for administering Ireland’s overseas aid programme, and it allocates up to 50% of the total aid budget.