Minister of State Neale Richmond has affirmed that Ireland will not follow other nations in cutting international aid budgets and is instead pushing for increased funding, despite global economic challenges.
Speaking during an official visit to Sierra Leone and Liberia, where he toured Irish Aid projects, Richmond highlighted the strategic importance of maintaining and potentially expanding Ireland’s international development commitments.
“It’s really important that we actually go and visit countries with Irish Aid projects in them particularly, to be quite frank, because other actors in the world are cutting their aid budgets, and we’re not,” Richmond told The Journal.
The Minister, who previously worked in the aid sector and lived in Ghana before entering politics, expressed disappointment with nations like the United States and United Kingdom that have reduced their international development spending.
Richmond characterized aid reductions as a “strategic failure rather than an altruistic failure” of the international community, arguing that development assistance addresses root causes of global challenges that ultimately affect donor countries.
“The more we have global instability, the more we have mass migration, the more we have conflict, the more that impacts our lives, the more our energy prices go up,” he explained. “This is actually how you combat the issues that the world faces, the big macro issues.”
According to The Journal, looking ahead to budget negotiations, Richmond revealed his intention to advocate not only for maintaining current aid levels but for increasing Ireland’s commitment. “I’ll be going to my ministerial colleagues at Budget time and telling them that not only do we need to maintain our allocation, but we need to seriously look at increasing it, despite the very real economic challenges that we’re facing,” he said.
The Minister also emphasized the need for better public communication about the importance of foreign aid, stating, “This isn’t something that we should be doing in silence, we need to sell it. We need to justify it.”
During his West African tour, Richmond noted that Sierra Leone ranks among the world’s ten poorest countries, facing challenges including unreliable electricity and limited access to education for girls. He pointed to Ireland’s maintenance of embassies in both Liberia and Sierra Leone—unusual among European nations—as evidence of the country’s commitment to these post-conflict societies.
The ministerial visit also included paying respects at the monument to Army Ranger Wing operator Sergeant Derek Mooney, who died in a car crash while serving on a peacekeeping mission in Liberia in 2003.