The new schedule for increases in Ireland's overseas aid budget will be negotiated year by year, according to the Minister of State for overseas aid, Mr Tom Kitt.
"The issue is reaching 0.7 per cent by 2007. How we get to it doesn't matter as long as we get there," he said yesterday. He was responding to a challenge from the former minister, Ms Liz O'Donnell, who said that, when in charge of aid, "I had to lie across that budget. I had to sit on it like a hen to protect it from all invaders."
She said cutbacks would not have happened if she had still been minister and called on the Taoiseach and the Government to publish a new schedule of incremental increases in the aid budget so that it reaches the UN target of 0.7 per cent of GNP annually by 2007.
The former minister, speaking on RTÉ's This Week radio programme, said, however, that she believed the Taoiseach would "hold to his word" at the Johannesburg Earth Summit, when he restated his commitment to reach the target by 2007.
She regretted the failure to reach the 0.45 per cent target this year and said she was worried about it because the aid budget was the most vulnerable to attack.
Overseas aid increased by €100 million this year to €340 million but was still €40 million less than agreed. The decision to cut it back was made between Ms O'Donnell's departure and the appointment of Mr Kitt.
Mr Kitt said the Taoiseach had made an absolute commitment at the Earth Summit conference to reach the target by 2007, and it was in the Programme for Government.
Ms O'Donnell said the 2003 aid budget had already been agreed, "The war has been done" on that and it had to remain intact. "It cannot be interfered with," she said, but Mr Kitt said that was before the election.
He said there would be "solid negotiations" to get a substantial, incremental agreement for 2003.
"That will not happen by rhetoric. It has to happen by phased, agreed, planned incremental increases in our aid budget," said Ms O'Donnell.
