Overseas aid: What's in a date?

Irish aid organisations called on the Government to make 2010 the new target date for reaching the overseas aid target of 0.7 per cent of GNP. Sound familiar? It should. The target – intended to boost aid from rich countries to poor countries – was first set at the United Nations over 30 years ago. In 2000, with Ireland campaigning for a seat on the UN Security Council, Bertie Ahern announced that we would reach the target by 2007. "We have now unprecedented prosperity in Ireland, but we remain a deeply concerned and caring people," he told an audience in New York.

Later, thanking an Argentinian audience for their country's support for the successful Security Council campaign, he said, "I am proud to say that Ireland is putting its money where its mouth is". Estimates at the time concluded this would mean donating €1 billion annually by 2007. By 2002, at the UN Johannesburg summit, the target had become an "absolute commitment" – though an academic study had already revealed cuts in that year's overseas aid budget of €40 million and concluded Ireland was not on track to meet the target. Each year since there were increases in the amount of aid given but, taking growth and revenues into account, aid as a percentage of GNP actually fell back, or remained static. On appointment to the junior ministerial post with responsibility for Foreign Affairs last October, Conor Lenihan admitted the inevitable – that the target would not be met – though there was no concession that this involved a broken promise. A Government decision to set the new target date is due before the Taoiseach travels to address the UN World Summit in New York on 14 September. Reports have cited unnamed finance officials as pressing for a 2015 date; Conor Lenihan said he has recommended that 2010 be the target. Either way, it remains a moveable feast – unless the target be enshrined in legislation.