Irelands Overseas AID budget 2011

Cork boy 55

Ireland Overseas aid budget in 2010 is 671 million
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0907/1224278366705.html

In the 2011 budget coming up what do you want the minister to do?

Myrddin

Resign

admiralofthefleet

look after its internal affairs first before helping overseas, charity begins at home

angry_fox

if it is cut how is mugabe going to be able keep his fleet of rolls royces on the road??

acurno

Cut it to zero until a full audit is done on the expenditure on 2009 aid budget.

Read 'Dead Aid' by Dambisa Moyo and 'War Games' by Linda Polman.

A real eye opener to anyone who cares about the development of the third world. Aid hinders development and extends and worsens conflict.

Hazys

As bad as things are in Ireland...

Ireland is pretty well off in comparison to the 5.5 billion people in World living on less than $10 a day.

Phill Ewinn

I'd be asking how effective this policy is from Ireland's point of view.

admiralofthefleet

so far today i have spent €5.69 i bought a 2 litre bottle of coke and a winning streak ticket so i have lived for under that amount today.
do i qualify for aid?

Hazys

admiralofthefleet wrote: »

so far today i have spent €5.69 i bought a 2 litre bottle of coke and a winning streak ticket so i have lived for under that amount today.
do i qualify for aid?

So you didnt eat anything today or pay any rent?

admiralofthefleet

Hazys wrote: »

So you didnt eat anything today or pay any rent?

i visited my mother for dinner and i have my own place

RayM

admiralofthefleet wrote: »

i visited my mother for dinner and i have my own place

That settles it then. The 5.5 billion people living on less than $10 a day should just get places of their own, and visit their mothers for dinner. Problem solved.

Spacedog

the worlds overpopulated.

at the moment we all spend a tiny anount on aid, and a whole lot on guns to keep the surplus down.

should be spending on rockets to get our asses off this planet before the fuel runs out.

if you believe in armageddon you won't care, already given up on humanity, but is mankind is to thrive, we have to make a sustainable jump to the stars, instead of fighting over the scraps left for us down here.

arthur c clarke knew it, gene roddenbury knew it, bill hicks knew it. my primary school teacher knew it.

keep the aid, spend the gun and bomb money on spaceships and that freeze dried icecream, I love that stuff.

angry_fox

I think there is 4000 + charities in ireland at the moment, its big business these days and the corrpution in overseas aid must be shocking.

kowloon

RayM wrote: »

That settles it then. The 5.5 billion people living on less than $10 a day should just get places of their own, and visit their mothers for dinner. Problem solved.

'Solution to world poverty final found', remember this day.

Chuchoter

Cut it completely. Bilateral aid does not work. Its never worked and never will work. Its white guilt and nothing else.

Wolfe Tone

As bad as we have it, recession etc.... People in other countries have it a thousand times worse. We are lucky, so lucky not to live in a country like they do, with starvation etc. It is our obligation to give as much money as possible.

Chuchoter

Thats all well and good, but its throwing money into a black hole. Bilateral aid never achieves anything other than infantilizing countries and funding corrupt governments.

Nodin

Cork boy 55 wrote: »

Ireland Overseas aid budget in 2010 is 671 million
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0907/1224278366705.html

In the 2011 budget coming up what do you want the minister to do?

Wheres the "leave it be" option in the poll?

Phill Ewinn

In AH its called atari jaguar or something.........

CrazyRabbit

I'd prefer a review of where the money is being spent. I don't agree with giving aid to countries like Pakistan that has spent billions on huge armies and developing nuclear weapons.

kincsem

Every charity in Ireland that supports third-world countries try this: employ someone from the aid country in the charity, and send someone from the charity to work in the aid country.

Try this until a high proportion of head office are foreign nationals, say on five year contracts, long enough to skill up, short enough so as not to get too institutionalized. At the end of the contract period the Irish could come back to head office with an idea of how to be effective, and the foreign nationals would know how to use the system to home advantage.

PeterIanStaker

Cut by a good bit but not entirely. There are still people in Haiti etc who need help to put their lives back together.

ScissorPaperRock

It's not just a matter of guilt. It's a matter of morality, as well as doing what in everybody's best interests.

As globalisation continues we are very rapidly going to see small problems grow very large and spreading very quickly, particularly with massive increases in populations and longer lifespans, and increased movement of people around the globe. As well as this we're facing the global challenge of becoming sustainable, and to try and reduce the rate of global warming.

It has to be done, we have to work together.

FreudianSlippers

crayolastereo wrote: »

Cut it completely. Bilateral aid does not work. Its never worked and never will work. Its white guilt and nothing else.

Doesn't work at all - the best thing we could do to aid those in need is give them something so they can produce their own money. With wind and solar power getting cheaper, we give them a few panels and windmills, and see what they can do with cheap electricity!

Gyalist

crayolastereo wrote: »

Thats all well and good, but its throwing money into a black hole. Bilateral aid never achieves anything other than infantilizing countries and funding corrupt governments.

Maybe you should inform yourself of how aid really works. The majority of foreign aid is actually spent in the donor country.

starbelgrade

ScissorPaperRoc wrote: »

It's not just a matter of guilt. It's a matter of morality, as well as doing what in everybody's best interests.

What is actually in the 3rd World's interests is that we stop throwing AID money at them. It does nothing for their problems, but only serves to make them worse.

It is no coincidence, that as foreign AID to Africa has increased, so too has poverty & starvation.

Yes, it is a matter of morality, but not in the way you are suggesting.

starbelgrade

Gyalist wrote: »

Maybe you should inform yourself of how aid really works. The majority of foreign aid is actually spent in the donor country.

Just because it is spent in the donor country doesn't mean that it is benefitting the most needy. And even when it does, it creates a culture of dependency, which is of no benefit to anybody.

ScissorPaperRock

starbelgrade wrote: »

What is actually in the 3rd World's interests is that we stop throwing AID money at them. It does nothing for their problems, but only serves to make them worse.

It is no coincidence, that as foreign AID to Africa has increased, so too has poverty & starvation.

Yes, it is a matter of morality, but not in the way you are suggesting.

It's a question of how aid is used. Helping build the structures so that these countries have the means to develop.

And no, it's not a coincidence. As the situation in Africa deteriorated, donor nations increased aid.

starbelgrade

ScissorPaperRoc wrote: »

It's a question of how aid is used. Helping build the structures so that these countries have the means to develop.

And no, it's not a coincidence. As the situation in Africa deteriorated, donor nations increased aid.

You are confusing the effects with the cause.

What Africa needs is widespread political change, not more money & interference from the West. Until that happens, things will never improve in Africa. They will only continue to deteriorate.

However, I fear that there are too many vested interests for this to be allowed to happen. And none of these vested interests have Africa's best interests at heart.

af_thefragile

Maybe he could move some of his $400billion defense budget into aid/economic stability budget...

KINGVictor

I am going to confess at the outset that I dont have have the statistics but I can imagine that the figure being quoted by the OP would be a "very low" percentage of the aggregate Irish budget.

We all know the huge amount of tax payers funds being used in the current face-saving endeavour by the government in relation to the Anglo-Irish Bank debacle!! Despite all attempts by economists and other well informed professionals about the long-run negative effects their actions will have on the Irish economy- yet they persist.

I believe that any friutful discussion/debate should be based on the folly of the Government's unbelievable attempt to destroy any chance of the Irish economy to resurrect in the near future rather than deliberate on a minister saying he would give aid of aid of + €600 million...do you honestly think the world and development agencies will miss any reduction or even in the extreme case , scrappge of our contributions, but you have to realise the budget of US's aid budget is almost the total budget of the Irish government and about a quarter of the Uk's.

I understand the concern of some folks who think that these funds could be chanelled to more pressing domestic issues but you have to look at the big picture- some folks are desperately waiting for Ireland to default to make a fortune- can we sacrifice our international goodwill at the expense of €600 million ??

RATM

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

and

http://www.financedublin.com/debtclock.php

ScissorPaperRock

starbelgrade wrote: »

You are confusing the effects with the cause.

The causes of 3rd world poverty and turmoil are the destruction of indigenous methods of production, and the subsequent exploitation (which still exists today), the drawing of territorial boundaries which have led to decades of war and conflict, and the fact that their economies are open to international markets, which are not level playing fields.

These causes would exist with or without aid, which has served to alleviate the problems to a certain extent, but not fix them.

What Africa needs is widespread political change, not more money & interference from the West. Until that happens, things will never improve in Africa. They will only continue to deteriorate.

It is not merely an issue of governance. They are interconnected with the west, there is no such thing as closed markets anymore. Be it through investment, transferring expertise and technology in health, agriculture, etc, resources are required to build these countries to a position where their development becomes self-sustainable.

There are a lot of problems with how aid is administered, but it is necessary.

tallaght01

starbelgrade wrote: »

It is no coincidence, that as foreign AID to Africa has increased, so too has poverty & starvation.

.

Well it's not a coincidence, but they have feck all to do with each other.

Irish Aid does't just lob cash at corrupt governments. It funds specific development projects, and has observers to make sure they're completed. We also work closely with the UN etc to collaborate on projects.
That's where you tax money goes.

In terms of charities like GOAL etc, they either help out in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, or are involved in development. Either way, they spend the vast majority of the cash themselves.

You're unlikely to change the whole dynamic of a continent with aid, as you don't have control over war, politics and famine etc. But let's be realistic, there are millions of people alive today because of aid. There are thousands of hospitals, clinics, schools, refuges, orphanages that wouldn't be in existence if it wasn't for our aid. There are god knows how many people alive because of it.

You should see how some of these people live. Imagine your little sister or your daughter having to sell her body to support your family. Or your entire family dying in pain from AIDS because you don't have the $1 per day for the treatment. Or imagine your 9 yea old son or little brother being taken away, along with all of his mates to fight in a war he wants no part of, and the girls being taken away to be used as sex servants for the rebel soldiers.

It's very easy for people to talk about these issues. But look at the uproar every time there's some cuts to our income. Imagine those cuts, but 1000 times worse, and then you might be somewhere close to knowing what's going on. I am flabbergasted every time I hear about people complaining about aid "when I'm stuck here with no job, eating tesco brand bread". And it's one thing that never ever becomes less amazing to me.

I know people think that poor lives or foreign lives are more important than our own, but they're not. Borders are just political boundaries, they shouldn't be human boundaries.

starbelgrade

I agree with ScissorPaperRoc on the causes of Africa's problems - whether in Latin America, Asia, or Africa, the story has been the same: the destabilization of peasant producers by a one-two punch of IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs that gutted government investment in the countryside followed by the massive influx of subsidized U.S. and European Union agricultural imports after the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture pried open markets.

But charity is a social medicine - two much of it and you create a junkie that can't survive without it. Not enough and the patient dies.

For me Charity begins and ends with relief effort - in the case of a disaster get the lights on, treat the sick, bury the dead, get the water flowing and put the roofs back on and get the hell out.

Aid is easy money. If governments had to rely upon private financial markets they would become accountable to lenders, and if they had to rely upon taxation they would become accountable to voters. Aid is like oil, enabling powerful elites to embezzle public revenues.

There is a better alternative. Governments could find money for development through financial markets, both international and domestic. Historically, the governments of those countries that have successfully developed funded investment by recourse to international markets.

In order to borrow, they needed decent credit ratings; to get the ratings, they had to be transparent and prudent. The discipline of transparency and prudence were as important as the money in promoting development.

Some of the stronger African governments have at last started down this road. There is huge scope for innovations in micro-finance, such as the group borrowing pioneered by the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.

bleg

If we have a drop off in population growth in 3rd world countries then foreign aid may become feasible again.

At the moment though it is just perpetuating an unsustainable population explosion.

Son Of A Vidic

We are a great little country with our foreign aid budget. Surely our duty as a nation first and foremost, should be the health and well being of all our citizens? We are not even able to manage this at the monent, never mind looking after the wider world. Then again, you get all the kudos on the international stage. There's no glory in looking after your own I suppose.

Cork boy 55

I voted to cut by 90% becuase of this

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055956308
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055956308