The aid agency Goal has called on the Government to conduct an audit on its entire overseas aid budget before deciding where to apply a planned €100 million cut.
Goal said a ‘value for money’ audit should take place before the cuts announced by Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan in this week's budget are imposed.
Chief executive John O’Shea said it was vital the exercise is carried out “in the interest of fairness and common sense”.
“Not all of the Government’s aid cash is used to help those in greatest need.”
Mr O’Shea said the Irish non-governmental organisations implementing the aid programme had a “proven record of getting the job done” and that they had continually received praise from the Government and other governments in that regard.
“The former head of the World Food Programme James Morris has called agencies such as Goal ‘the best in the world’", he said. "This can be rarely said about the many governments that the Irish Aid programme supports – governments with the stain of corruption and brutality all over them.”
Mr O’Shea said if the Government again opted to cut the budget for NGOs it would represent a “crushing blow to the poorest of the poor”.
“A Government audit will reveal where taxpayers money will have the most impact at the least cost.”
Mr O’Shea has been a vocal critic of the way overseas aid is distributed and spent in some countries, including Uganda and Zambia.
Last year, he called for the establishment of an ombudsman’s office to oversee the spending of the Irish aid budget to ensure “that only those with a genuine interest in helping the poorest of the poor would handle Irish taxpayers' money”.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin said this week the Government was committed to resuming the expansion of the aid programme as soon as economic growth had been re-established. The total ODA budget for 2009 is €696 million, or about 0.48 per cent of GNP.
Mr Martin said Ireland’s commitment was to achieve the international target of spending 0.7 per cent of GNP on overseas aid by 2012, compared to the “broad EU commitment” to achieving such a target by 2015.