Overseas aid: The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr Conor Lenihan, has ignited a fresh row after claiming some aid agencies were spending large sums on campaigning work at home instead of sending it to the poor of the developing world.
A day after facing widespread criticism over the Government's failure to honour promises on aid spending, Mr Lenihan was accused yesterday of harming the agencies' ability to raise money from the public.
"Some NGOs spend enormous amounts of money on advocacy as opposed to sending money to the Third World," he told RTÉ radio. An investigation of the matter would find "some very interesting results about the people who shout very loud on this particular issue".
While agencies expressed shock at the Minister's comments, Opposition spokesmen accused him of trying to divert attention away from the Government's failure to adhere to UN targets on aid spending.
Last night, Mr Lenihan, who is responsible for Ireland's €476 million annual aid budget, insisted there was general concern about the amount agencies spent on advocacy and administration. Restricting spending in this area might become a criterion for State funding, he told The Irish Times.
Asked to identify which agencies he was concerned about, Mr Lenihan replied: "I've none in mind. It's a general issue. As Minister, I've seen the accounts and I would be concerned if money was being wasted on advocacy that should be going to help the poor." He said he wasn't suggesting there was a problem and he wasn't "casting aspersions" on aid agencies. The director of Trócaire, Mr Justin Kilcullen, described Mr Lenihan's comments as "outrageous". Trócaire spends €200,000 a year on its policy and advocacy unit, out of a total budget of €45 million.
Concern said it spent less than 0.5 per cent of its budget on advocacy and Christian Aid said its advocacy budget was less than 1 per cent of the overall total.
Labour's spokesman on foreign affairs, Mr Michael D. Higgins, described the Minister's remarks as a "crude attempt" to divert attention away from the Government "shameful" decision to renege on its aid commitments.
"Minister Lenihan questioned the wisdom of development organisations spending money on advocacy and appeared to imply that this money was in some way wasted. Increasing public awareness of conditions in the developing world is a perfectly legitimate, indeed necessary, part of the work of NGOs."
Sinn Féin TD Mr Aengus Ó Snodaigh called on the Minister to apologise for his "discourteous, combative and offensive" remarks. "This was an outrageous and slanderous attempt to take the focus off the Government's failure to live up to the solemn pledge it made to the world's poorest people in 2000, again in 2002 and as recently as last month. Mr Lenihan should be ashamed of himself.
According to Mr Ó Snodaigh, the Minister should resign for having misled the Dáil if he was unable to "make good" his commitment of last month to make the UN target of spending 0.7 per cent of GNP on aid by 2007.
The Government now plans to increase aid from the current level of 0.39 per cent of GNP to 0.5 per cent by 2007, it revealed in this week's Estimates.
The Fine Gael leader, Mr Enda Kenny, described the Government's failure to meet the UN target as "a brazen U-turn" which represented "an abuse of trust, an abuse of power and, ultimately, a savage and senseless abuse of the world's poorest people."
