We’re holding politicians to account for their antics at home. Now, can we please know where our foreign aid is going?

by Max McGuinness

Someone must always guard the guards. The legislature, the courts, the press and financial auditors exist to supervise and challenge power. Without independent institutions like these, politicians and plutocrats would run amok. And it must be said that the level of transparency has markedly improved in this country. The fact that the Mahon Tribunal has been able to expose the lies and hucksterism of our soon to be ex-Taoiseach, as Charlie Haughey, Ray Burke and Michael Lowry were exposed in their turn, is a testament to the relative health of Irish democracy. The president of France would never have to submit to such interrogation, nor, short of being impeached, would the American president. But buried in March 24th’s Irish Times was an emphatic ‘fuck you’ to Irish taxpayers and millions of citizens in some of the world’s poorest countries alike.

A Freedom of Information request by the paper to view the reports of seven internal audits conducted by Irish Aid, the government’s programme of assistance to developing countries, has been flatly refused with no good reason. This means that over €800 million of taxpayers’ money being spent on foreign aid each year is effectively closed to public scrutiny. Since hundreds of millions in aid is given to governments in Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda, whose reputation for accountability is somewhat below Scandinavian levels, this is one area of the budget that demands close investigation.

Irish Aid’s ostensible reason for not releasing all but one part of one of the seven reports requested is that information was given by external parties “in confidence to the department.” Translated, this means that the audits must have turned up something dodgy. If there was nothing sensitive about the information, confidentiality would have been unnecessary. It is legitimate for the department to protect the identity of its sources when exposure could put these individuals at risk. But it is normally possible to report information without revealing the source of that information – journalists do it every day.

The department’s insistence that it could not release a single word out of six whole reports for fear of blowing their sources’ cover is utterly disingenuous. The probability that the reports deal with misuse of public money makes it a matter of great public interest that their contents should be known. And what does it say about respect for human rights in countries receiving Irish aid if those who give information about how this is spent risk persecution?

The real reason the department refuses to release the reports is to maintain secrecy about embezzlement and the waste of Irish aid money by corrupt and often autocratic governments. The allocation of the ever-increasing Irish aid budget will thus remain the only part of government spending subjected to no public oversight at all. These reports cannot be debated in the Dail, cannot be discussed in the press, and cannot be examined by jurists.

Since we are told that a significant proportion of Irish aid money is pledged towards promoting “good governance” in recipient countries, there is an extraordinary irony to this stonewalling. Irish efforts to make other governments more accountable themselves lack any accountability.

Irish journalists actively connive in this opaque system. Most reporting on Irish Aid programmes in Africa and Latin America is paid for by...Irish Aid. Journalists are invited by the department to go on an all-expenses paid jolly in one of the countries in receipt of Irish largesse. They spend their time in the field accompanied by Irish Aid press officers and diplomats who concoct a schedule suitably filled with visits to hospital wards and schools funded by Irish Aid. In the evening, they have dinner and drink beer with the same people. Under these conditions, objective reporting is impossible. The resultant dispatches are thus filled with laudatory descriptions of the wonderful work being done by the wonderful people from Irish Aid.
Why do we view the government as being bad at building roads, schools, hospitals in Ireland yet trust them to perform similar tasks in other countries?

If the Irish aid budget received the same level of scrutiny as the health budget, do you think that similar levels of waste and inefficiency would not appear? It is also obvious that at least some of the money being given, for example, to the Ugandan government is being stolen. Any policy on overseas aid must strike a balance between helping the poor and facilitating an inevitable amount of corruption. But instead of trying to explain this to Irish taxpayers, Irish Aid censors its own reports as if this problem did not exist. And if I am completely wrong about all this, the government just needs to publish its own reports.

Comments

[Southshorefrog]

Why not put Bono in charge of Irish Aid? Meglomaniacal as Dubliners might think he is, at least he seems honest in his efforts to help underdeveloped countries receive unconditional aid without "government leaders" taking their cut first. And Bono certainly doesn't want for money, so he'd keep his hand out of the till.