Making Trade Work for Development

Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin has started a valuable debate about the role of Irish businesses in Africa. He would like to complement the high-quality Irish aid programme with a deeper private sector engagement in the fast-growing economies of African nations. This blog provides a few pointers as to how we can get there.

The benefits of overseas aid

Text of a letter published in the Sunday Business Post, 25 July 2010, arguing that Ireland needs to keep its aid promise, as an essential step to get our country back on track.

Time to ACT NOW to save Ireland’s development cooperation programme.

Ireland signed up to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000, as an indication that we will not tolerate the extreme inequality in the world. We pledged to increase our overseas aid, so that we would reach the UN target of spending 0.7% of national income on overseas aid.
Now is the time to deliver on that commitment. We must ACT NOW.

Aid or Trade?

Our recent conference on “new voices in development” has succeeded in reviving the discussions on how best to assist developing countries. But, in Ireland, the public debate is still in its infancy. This blog hopes to move the discussion along.

Leinster House must Act Now on 2015

In the Oireachtas, there is cross-party support for Ireland’s overseas aid programme. Now it is time for our TDs and Senators to convert that support into determined action on the MDGs.

Of course it’s not just about more aid.

In the midst of discussions about whether governments are delivering on their promises to provide “more and better aid”, we must not forget that rich countries present many obstacles to the development of poorer countries, and that if we are to make poverty history, we must tackle the many ways in which choices made in the West impact on developing countries. A recent NGO report aims to put the Spotlight on this lack of coherence.