February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The pledge — which supercedes a 2002 commitment that promised to meet the aid target by 2007 — was both welcomed and criticized by Irish aid organizations.
Ahern’s address to the General Assembly, delivered on Wednesday, focused specifically on the aid issue.
A more far ranging speech covering global issues was made before the Assembly the following Monday by his government colleague, Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern.
Taoiseach Ahern told the gathered leaders of 191 nations that Ireland would move to meet the 0.7 percent commitment seven years from now, this despite the fact that the European Union is giving its member states until 2015 to meet the target.
“Today I recommit Ireland to reaching the U.N. target of 0.7 per cent. This will be achieved by 2012, three years earlier than the agreed EU target date of 2015,” the taoiseach told the Assembly.
Ahern later said that Ireland was putting its money where its mouth was with regard to the war on world poverty.
“On current growth projections this will mean that we will spend eight billion [euro] on overseas assistance from now until the end of 2012,” Ahern said.
“These are enormous sums of money from my country in any reckoning. It means a tripling of ODA [official development assistance] over the next seven years,” Ahern said.
Ahern’s government had come under strong criticism from aid agencies, church leaders and rights groups after his government stepped back from its original 2007 pledge.
The Irish government cited a changed economic climate in the aftermath of 9/11 as one reason to delay meting its target.
Last week, however, Ahern spoke of “an affront to our common humanity” that, five years after the Millennium Summit, 30,000 children around the world were succumbing daily to “easily-preventable” diseases.
And it was equally an affront that 100 million people went to bed hungry and that 100 million children were not receiving a basic education.
“Ireland is not a silent witness to this continuing tragedy,” Ahern said.
The Irish government is now planning to immediately raise aid expenditure from a present annual level of