Conor Lenihan is a peculiar kind of a throwback. For someone who moaned in 2002 about the absence of younger TDs as ministers (he had been left out), he now turns out to be one of the most old-fashioned of them all, writes Mary Raftery.
Finally made a minister of state last month (Overseas Development Aid and Human Rights), he now has a platform to air his bizarrely antiquated criticism of aid agencies. They are spending too much money on advocacy, he says. The implication is clear: they should confine themselves to doling out the few bob and keep their mouths shut.
The development of advocacy - literally speaking up for others - within a number of Ireland's aid agencies has been a crucial impetus in the movement away from a simple, charity-based approach to world poverty. The old black-baby-buying attitude to the Third World has now mostly been superseded by a sophisticated and much more useful focus on injustice and denial of rights for the millions of people who live on below a dollar a day.
Leading this movement have been organisations like Trócaire and Concern. The money spent by Trócaire, for instance, on lobbying the EU for large-scale funding for anti- apartheid organisations within South Africa was a critical factor in that country's peaceful transition to democracy.
Advocacy campaigns on issues such as land mines and Third World debt have meant that Trócaire and indeed Ireland have punched way above their weight in terms of international effectiveness in these areas.
When it comes to identifying priorities for funding, it is abundantly clear that it is precisely through advocacy that Ireland can make a real difference. The Department of Foreign Affairs has recognised this for many years, gradually increasing the amount of funding for advocacy which it grants to aid agencies. But now along comes Conor Lenihan with his extraordinary attack on the advocacy role of these agencies, rubbishing in the space of a few seconds the thoughtful progress made by both themselves and his own Department over the last two decades.
The most charitable interpretation of his crass and ignorant remarks is that he was simply flailing around, looking for any target to distract attention from the Government's despicable reneging on its commitment to allocate 0.7 per cent of GNP to overseas development aid by 2007.
And indeed, the volume of Government disinformation on this issue has been breathtaking. We can't meet our target, the Government tells us, because the growth in GNP has been so great that the proportion of 0.7 is now too large for us to pay out by the promised date of 2007. At the same time, we are told that because of the economic slowdown during 2001 and 2002, we can't afford to meet the target any more.
So which is it? One minute, we're too rich to pay a measly 0.7 per cent to those who have nothing and the next we're too poor to keep our promise. The reality is that the Government knew all along precisely what the cost to the Exchequer would be. The Department of Foreign Affairs very thoroughly did its sums in 2000, when the commitment was made. It said unambiguously that meeting the UN target of 0.7 per cent of GNP would result in Ireland's annual allocation for overseas aid reaching just over €1 billion by 2007.
The Government had already factored into its calculations the projected growth in GNP - remarkably accurately, as it turn out - and the figure of €1 billion by 2007 remains exactly the same now as it was then.
In short, the breaking of our promise to the world has nothing to do with our rate of economic growth. What has altered since 2000 are the Government's priorities and its personnel.
The past three ministers for overseas development and human rights had both an intimate understanding of development issues and a clear commitment to international justice. Joan Burton, Liz O'Donnell and Tom Kitt relentlessly fought their corner. The commendable result was the constantly repeated proud boast that Ireland would lead the world in meeting its UN target for development funding.
Conor Lenihan, on the other hand, had not once that I can find opened his mouth publicly on Third World issues before his appointment as Minister of State. It is no accident that it is on his watch that the Government has pulled the ground out from under its "solemn commitment".
As to priorities, a sharp reminder of where this Government's interest lies also came during the week. The Minister for Sport and Tourism, John O'Donoghue, once again defended the doubling of State aid to the horse and greyhound racing industries, now standing at half a billion euro over the next few years.
Funnily enough, that's almost exactly the shortfall in overseas aid which would bring us up to our 0.7 per cent UN target by 2007. Even at this late stage, choosing people over horses might just allow us to salvage some little respect in the wake of the shame of having been exposed as bare-faced liars on the world stage.