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Trócaire welcomes Budget 2020 ODA increase

Trócaire has welcomed the increase in the Government’s overseas development budget and reiterated its call for a roadmap outlining how Ireland will meet its international development commitments.

The beneficiaries queueing to be registered before receiving supplies. Photo: Allan Gichigi. The beneficiaries queueing to be registered before receiving supplies. Photo: Allan Gichigi.

“In the context of a constrained ‘Brexit’ budget, Trócaire welcomes the €21m increase in official development assistance (ODA) included in Budget 2020,” said Caoimhe de Barra, Trócaire CEO. “However, given the scale of the global development needs, Budget 2020 must be a stepping stone to achieving the target of ODA reaching 0.7% of Ireland’s Gross National Income by 2025. At present Ireland is only about halfway there so we urge the government to develop a strategy to reach the target in full and on time.”

Trócaire is a close partner of Irish Aid, the Irish Government’s overseas development programme. Irish Aid is a recognised leader in overseas development and Trócaire has for many years called on the Government to meet its international spending commitments in order to further increase the impact of its work in the developing world.

Despite development gains in 2019 nearly 132 million people globally will still need humanitarian assistance. Conflict and political instability remains the main driver of humanitarian needs. However climate change is often a cause or compounding factor in humanitarian crises.  Ireland’s performance on climate action is undermining the critical support provided by Ireland’s Overseas Aid Programme to the world’s poorest people.

Trócaire has again called on the Government to show increased ambition on carbon emission reductions.

“The Government has over recent months presented a series of climate action measures, all valuable in their own right, but what we lack is an ambitious target that aligns with the science and that clearly sets the benchmark against which to measure ourselves,” said Caoimhe. “There is a lot of focus on the carbon tax but this is just one measure that needs to be part of a much broader and more ambitious response to the threat of climate change, starting by supporting the proposal to increase the collective EU emissions reduction target by 55 per cent by 2030.”

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