News of significant job losses at two of Ireland’s largest international aid agencies brings home the stark reality of the crisis that now faces the sector. Goal and Concern Worldwide are both implementing deep cuts in staffing and funding in response to a sudden reduction in financing.
About 930 people around the world, including 28 in Ireland, are set to lose their jobs with Goal, while Concern has already announced 400 job losses, warning more will follow.
The main cause is the assault by the Trump administration on USAID, which has effectively gutted the federal agency’s funding programmes across the world. The destruction has been presented to the American public as a pushback against “woke” projects, along with unsubstantiated allegations of fraud. In reality the vast majority of affected programmes are devoted to providing healthcare, poverty relief and development support in some of the world’s poorest regions. Although many cuts are being challenged in US courts, about 90 per cent of USAID’s €55 billion budget has currently been cancelled.
Minister of State for International Development Neale Richmond is not wrong when he describes this as an “existential crisis” for international aid agencies. USAID was Goal’s largest donor, providing €103 million – 54 per cent of its total expenditure – in 2023.
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Until the shuttering of USAID, the US accounted for 23 per cent of OECD countries’ international aid funding. But it is not alone in cutting spending. As donor countries in Europe and elsewhere rebalance their budgets in favour of defence, their own aid budgets are coming under pressure. In the UK, Keir Starmer’s government announced last month that aid would fall from 0.5 per cent of national income to 0.3 per cent – a reduction of about €7 billion – in order to pay for additional defence expenditure. Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands have also cut their aid budgets.
The consequences are already being felt. The World Health Organisation reports that HIV treatments in 50 countries have been suspended, with polio and mpox efforts also affected. Goal has said the cuts are affecting life-saving care for children suffering from malnutrition in Ethiopia.
The system of humanitarian aid that has grown up over decades has faced many calls for reform, but few wished to see it dismantled entirely, as the Trump administration apparently does. The Government has said there will be no reductions in Ireland’s aid programme but that it cannot provide substitute funding to offset the cuts.
MEP and former Goal chief executive Barry Andrews says the Government should have “an honest conversation” with aid agencies about rationalisation or mergers. Given the gravity of the situation, that seems good advice.
