Foreign Aid
Ireland's aid program was founded in 1974, and in 2006 its budget amounted to €734 million. The government has set a target of reaching the Millennium Development Goal of 0.7% of Gross National Product in aid by 2012, a target which is projected to amount to €1.5 billion based on current GNP growth. Irish development aid is concentrated on eight priority countries: Lesotho, Mozambique, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zambia, Uganda, Vietnam and East Timor. in 2006, Malawi was announced as the ninth priority country, with a tenth country to follow. Aid has had to be reduced because of the 2008–2011 Irish financial crisis.
As of 2012, Joe Costello is the Minister of State for Trade and Development at the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Read more about this topic: Foreign Relations Of The Republic Of Ireland
Famous quotes containing the words foreign and/or aid:
“She planted corn and left the rest
to elements, convinced that God
with giant faucets regulates the rain
and saves the crops from frost or foreign wind.”
—Richard Hugo (1923–1982)
“There exists in a great part of the Northern people a gloomy diffidence in the moral character of the government. On the broaching of this question, as general expression of despondency, of disbelief that any good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act of fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel. Will the American government steal? Will it lie? Will it kill?—We ask triumphantly.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)