Letters to the Editor: Overseas aid budget not enough to meet escalating humanitarian needs
![Letters to the Editor: Overseas aid budget not enough to meet escalating humanitarian needs Letters to the Editor: Overseas aid budget not enough to meet escalating humanitarian needs](/cms_media/module_img/7594/3797302_14_articlesmall_R248958_20Khadija.jpg)
In the context of humanitarian needs €776.5m 'does not go far enough'. Picture: Samar Hazboun/ActionAid
What we give in our overseas aid budget is our statement of solidarity and commitment as a country to ending poverty globally, and to supporting human rights, particularly women’s rights.
Irish Aid programmes are recognised as world-leading. However, we must remember that the scale of humanitarian disaster and climate crisis is staggering. Acute food insecurity globally continues to escalate, disproportionality impacting women and girls.
If Ireland is serious about addressing rising global poverty, and the impact of climate, conflict, and hunger, we need to get serious about ending the use of fossil fuels.
ActionAid Ireland recently revealed that Ireland is playing a worrying role in fuelling the climate crisis as a significant channel for global institutional investment in fossils fuels and harmful industrial agriculture.
Funds registered here hold a staggering €5.7bn in bonds and shares in climate-harming activities in the Global South.
It is essential that Government policies must not undermine our aid commitments. We are at a dangerous moment in relation to the climate crisis. Ireland needs to step up — not just in climate finance, but with coherent policies that truly tackle the crisis.
The most significant climate investment in Budget 2024 is the new ‘Future of Ireland Fund’, with an initial input of €4bn and a commitment to contributions equating to 0.8% of GDP annually between 2024 and 2035. This amounts to €4.3bn this year. Budget 2024 estimates that by 2035 the fund will grow to €100bn. On these projections, this fund is a notable contribution to the €120bn needed to execute CAP 23.
However, Ireland’s GDP is estimated to grow on average by 3.3% per annum. On this basis, the fund will amount to €39.82bn by 2030 and €78.82bn by 2035, far short of the predicted €100bn. Budget 2024 also commits €14bn by 2030 for the ‘Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund’, through annual contributions of €2bn. A further €3bn is set aside for capital projects that contribute to achieving Ireland’s climate budgets.
In total, these commitments amount to €56.82bn in climate-focused governmental expenditure by 2030, €63.18bn below the estimated €120bn necessary to execute CAP 23. This demonstrates a misalignment between the Government’s budgetary spending and its CAP 23 commitments.
Further, the Government’s ambivalent attitude is conspicuous from it terming the main fund to address Ireland’s climate commitments as the ‘Future of Ireland Fund’. Climate change is not a ‘future’ issue, but an ever-present threat. Amassing funds by 2030 in the hope that climate change will go away is not addressing the issue but leaving the problem to be addressed in the future.
It puts present political palatability above the real urgency to address the climate crisis. Budget 2024 undermines CAP 23 and questions the Government’s sincerity to its climatic commitments.
Imminent governmental action and expenditure to address climate change is required. Budget 2024 is not only unsatisfactory to meet Ireland’s 2030 commitments but signifies an alarming governmental attitude to the seriousness of climate change as a present world issue.
![A reader ponders whether Richard Boyd Barrett has a forest of money plants to fund his expansive plans. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins A reader ponders whether Richard Boyd Barrett has a forest of money plants to fund his expansive plans. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins](https://www.irishexaminer.com/cms_media/module_img/7594/3797341_8_articleinline_CC_20LEINSTER_20HOUSE_20_4.jpg)
The budget as a whole is uninspiring and lacks impact. It does nothing to emphatically address the housing crisis, which is one of the biggest challenges facing our country. A budget is normally an opportunity for the Government to make a statement about the issues it cares about, but there was nothing in this budget to suggest that the Government cares about housing, or about the people who are struggling to afford to live in their own country.
I am particularly disappointed that there was nothing in the budget to address the shortage of affordable housing. The Government has promised to build more affordable housing, but has not done enough to make this a reality. The budget should have included funding for the construction of far more affordable housing, as well as measures to help people who are struggling to afford to buy or rent a home. One-off payments, particularly non-targeted ones, do not address the real problems. They are attention-getting and an
attempt to dupe the electorate, yet they risk inflationary pressures.
Budget 2024 is a disappointment. It does not address the biggest challenges facing our country and it does not provide enough support for those who need it most.
This is a difficult subject to talk about, and I feel it was made more and unnecessarily difficult for Ms Walsh to be the only voice in the room opposing what the others were saying. A 50-50 split would have been far more fair, so that she wasn’t the lone voice going against what three men were saying.
Garrett Ahern’s comments on this inexorable social trajectory towards liberalisation with regards to divorce, contraception, marriage equality, and abortion was inappropriate. I understand he’s a member of the public and has his own personal view, but it is wrong (in this member of the public’s view) to frame euthanasia as within some sort of social liberal box of inevitable “progress”.
I personally find State-backed euthanasia to be an acknowledgment that hope has its limits and that suicide can be the answer. This to me is not progress, but a cheapening of human life.
SUSTAINABILITY & CLIMATE
Check out our Sustainability and Climate Change Hub where you will find the latest news, features, opinions and analysis on this topic from across the various Irish Examiner topic desks and their team of specialist writers and columnists.