IRISH AID: DAN O'BRIENreviews Inside Irish Aid: The Impulse to Help By Ronan Murphy Liffey Press, 298pp. €19.95
TOO FEW public servants write memoirs. But when retired officials (and politicians) do sit down to take stock of their time serving citizens, the results almost always provide insights – intentional and unintentional – into the too-closed world of Irish government. Ronan Murphy’s history of Ireland’s official aid programme is no exception.
A former diplomat who led the State’s foreign-aid agency on two occasions and who now runs Mary Robinson’s climate-change foundation, Murphy put much time and effort into researching and writing the volume. The end product is a four-decade history that is informative and wide ranging. It is readable, too, mainly because it is deliberately free of the jargon of the development community.
He recalls the beginnings of the programme in the early 1970s. In large part the impetus came, as it so often does in Ireland’s inert politics, from Europe: having an aid programme was a condition of EEC membership. Originally modelled on how the Danes did aid, the programme grew (very unsteadily) from tiny origins to become one of the largest in the world relative to the size of the economy that funds it.
Murphy’s observations say much not only about the State’s aid programme and how it has evolved but also about the role politicians have played in its evolution. Most ministers appear to have been passengers, not drivers. While almost all were supportive of the programme, reflecting support across the political spectrum for providing assistance to developing countries, their main contribution over the decades was to front visits to the countries to which aid was given.
Garret FitzGerald, whom Murphy clearly admired, was an exception. His role in setting up the aid programme in the 1970s and advancing it as foreign minister and then taoiseach is documented and applauded. By contrast, FitzGerald’s great nemesis hardly features. Of three mentions, one is worth quoting: “Charlie Haughey showed no interest in aid other than very occasional grants for assistance following high-profile disasters.”
But critical comment of this kind is rare. Murphy prefers to praise. The one-time foreign ministers David Andrews and Dick Spring are described respectively as a “constant supporting presence” and “the ideal boss”. The Defence Forces “played a blinder”. Former colleagues in the diplomatic corps “behaved professionally, as they always do”.
It is right, proper and generous of the author to recognise the contribution so many Irish people have made to the development cause, but when a willingness to praise is not matched by willingness to criticise (where it is warranted), analytical impartiality and objectivity are undermined. This is the book’s greatest flaw.
A glaring example is Murphy’s explanation of the decision by Bertie Ahern’s second administration to reverse the commitment given during the first to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national product on aid (a target that all developed countries signed up to in 1970 but that few have met). Murphy attributes the volte-face to the economic effects of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. This could not be more wrong.
Although the attacks had momentous geopolitical consequences, they had no economic impact, on Ireland or anyone else. Even the US, which had gone into recession in 2000, officially exited it in the period of the attacks. Ahern’s row-back on the aid target had nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with an unprecedented spending spree in the run-up to the 2002 election. The brakes had to be slammed on after the poll to prevent the public finances spinning out of control. Sole responsibility for spending cuts, on aid and other areas, lay with Murphy’s fiscally irresponsible political masters at home, not mass murdering jihadis abroad, and to attribute these to the latter is to exculpate the former.
Assessments of the roles played by foreign actors are more balanced than those of the Irish players. Murphy not only dealt with the UN throughout his diplomatic career but worked for it when he took leave of absence to join Mary Robinson’s team during her spell as human-rights commissioner. He is sceptical about the effectiveness of some of its agencies in improving lives in developing countries. (Having worked for the UN in west Africa, this reviewer does not find his scepticism to be without foundation.)
About a third of the Irish aid budget is channelled through multilateral institutions, most in the UN “family”, and the rest is given bilaterally. The way that bilateral aid is distributed has changed radically over time. From its beginnings until the late 1990s, individual projects, such as hospitals and teacher-training colleges, were funded. For many reasons this method has gone out of fashion internationally, to be replaced by direct funding of governments in poor countries. There is a great debate in the development community about which delivery method is best. Murphy does not come down on one side or the other.
The biggest issue of all – whether aid makes a lasting difference to those who receive it – is curiously left to an afterword. Despite the cursory treatment, the author summarises the debate well and fairly. The views of intelligent sceptics, such as the Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo and the former World Bank staffer William Easterly, are given equal consideration to those of intelligent advocates, including Oxford University’s Paul Collier and the Earth Institute’s Jeff Sachs. Murphy’s conclusion on the effectiveness of aid, as with his conclusion on the best way to deliver it, is that the jury remains out but that it is worth doing, and worth trying to do better.
Among the reasons for hope he offers is the successful development of so many impoverished countries over a decade and more. The considerable achievements of most sub-Saharan countries in improving health and education, and in growing their economies on a sustained basis for the first time since independence, is largely unknown in the West. The development community should do more to spread the good news.
Dan O’Brien is Economics Editor
