Irish Aid, foreign assistance, and ODA, explained

In the last year, we’ve seen foreign assistance funding be cut around the world, against a global increase in humanitarian need. This has led to programmes being cut short, humanitarian responses being reduced, and millions of people facing dire consequences without having any recourse. 

Ireland has been one of the few exceptions to this trend among donor countries. In fact, the government has committed to an annual increase in Official Development Assistance, working towards the UN target of 0.7% of gross national income. This commitment is one of the reasons that Ireland ranks #2 overall in the most recent Principled Aid Index.

Foreign assistance is a key source of funding for NGOs around the world, and a core mechanism through which governments work together to address some of the most pressing issues of our time – including conflict, hunger, and the climate crisis. Here’s what you need to know about foreign aid, the ODA, and Irish Aid – including how the Irish taxpayers are helping to transform lives around the world.

Broadly speaking, foreign assistance refers to anything that one country gives for the benefit of another country. 

This assistance includes money, but can also be provided in the form of in-kind donations of goods or services, including emergency food assistance, education support, water delivery and access, hygiene and sanitation supplies and infrastructure, agriculture training, peace-building activities, climate resilience programmes, and healthcare supplies and services. 

No matter the actual deliverable, the goal is the same: to maintain a functioning global society. 

ODA is the technical term that researchers and policymakers use for foreign assistance. The term comes from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The OECD has a comprehensive definition for official development assistance in part to create a common denominator among its member countries and measure the distribution and impact of aid. The main takeaway is that, in order to qualify as official development assistance in the OECD’s book, the funding must be “administered with the promotion of the economic development and welfare of developing countries as the main objective.” 

Irish Aid is Ireland's overseas development programme, as funded by the Irish taxpayer. A division of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Irish Aid manages much of Ireland’s bilateral ODA and funds both humanitarian responses and development programmes. 

Irish Aid was established in 1974 (six years after Concern Worldwide’s history began). Concern and Irish Aid have enjoyed a long partnership in that time, focusing on our common goals of tackling extreme poverty and reducing humanitarian need.

Probably not as much as you think. As we mentioned above, the UN’s goal is for donor countries to spend 0.7% of their gross national income each year on foreign assistance – and that’s a goal that most countries have yet to meet.

In 2024, Ireland invested €2.35 billion in foreign assistance (0.56% of our GNI). That’s a large sum of money, but the total government expenditure for that year was €126 billion – meaning that ODA accounted for less than 2% of the budget. In 2024, government debt was also reduced by €3.7 billion compared to 2023.

Part of this answer comes out of the OECD’s history and current function. The OECD is a successor to the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OECC – sorry, we know it’s a lot of acronyms all using many of the same letters). 

The OECC was established in 1948.  At that time, with much of Europe reduced to rubble by World War II, the United States led an initiative known as the Marshall Plan. It provided over $13 billion USD – the equivalent of €156 billion in 2026 – to rebuild economies destroyed by conflict, create democratic trading partners throughout western Europe, and promote lasting peace and stability on the continent. 

In 1960, the OECC became the OECD. It brought in non-European members (including the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand), and began to shift focus from European development to a more global focus. 

This is a bit of preamble, but it brings us to ODA as we know it, particularly the “why”: The collaborative initiatives that helped to rebuild Europe after the war set a precedent for multilateral cooperation on economic and development policy, and the Marshall Plan not only aided reconstruction but also reinforced political alliances and created economic partnerships that reduced instability. 

Foreign aid, via the OECC and OECD, emerged as a tool to further international cooperation and shared prosperity. 

Beyond its political value, ODA is also rooted in shared values of human rights, humanity, and justice (values that come from Ireland’s own recent history). Research from Dóchas’s latest Worldview report has found that many people in Ireland see ODA as a reflection of these values, as well as a sense of morality, empathy, and humanitarianism. 

Beyond these values, ODA also has a long track record of practical success in countries facing poverty, hunger, humanitarian crises, and natural disasters. At its best, it represents an investment in sustainable development that benefits both donor and recipient countries over time – strengthening international cooperation, building goodwill, and supporting the economic and social foundations for long-term stability and prosperity.

Let’s look at some of the concrete benefits of foreign assistance:

Since the founding of Irish Aid, a key focus of Irish ODA has been in sub-Saharan Africa, where the last 50 years have seen humanitarian, economic, environmental, and social crises causing suffering for millions of people – particularly as many countries gained independence through the 1960s. 

Many of the countries where Ireland has played a role in development assistance have since become trade partners. Since 2019, two-way trades in goods and services between Ireland and countries across the continent have increased by over €2 billion, with a record set in 2022 of €7.8 billion total. Our largest partners include South Africa, Egypt, Morocco, Guinea, and Algeria. In 2023, we exported 33,000 tonnes of brewing malt to Nigeria and imported €26 million worth of tea from Kenya. 

As Tánaiste Simon Harris said last year, “the economic potential of Africa as an export market for Irish businesses is huge. While serious challenges remain across the continent, I believe that Ireland’s mutually beneficial trading relationship with countries across Africa will grow significantly in the years ahead.”

This is part of a larger partnership between Europe and Africa as neighbouring continents. The EU is Africa’s largest trading partner, its biggest partner in development cooperation, and its largest source of investment. 

Ireland and the African Union share a strong commitment to multilateral cooperation. Through longstanding development partnerships and diplomatic engagement, Ireland works closely with African partners on issues such as peace and security, humanitarian response, and sustainable development in international forums including the United Nations Security Council. 

These relationships were fostered in part thanks to decades of development cooperation through Irish Aid. Over time, our ODA partnerships became lasting relationships, with Ireland having a diplomatic presence in key cities like Addis Ababa and Nairobi. 

We talk a lot about humanitarian aid and development; peace is the third element in what we call the Humanitarian-Development-Peace nexus. Conflict, forced displacement, hunger, and political instability are all areas of focus for foreign assistance. By supporting resilience against these hazards abroad, we also lower the risk that these crises spread further – including internationally. 

This goes back directly to ODA funding: Research from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute finds that post-conflict countries that receive a higher share of peace-oriented ODA are less likely to relapse into conflict. 

We saw this happen in Sierra Leone: following the end of a brutal, 11-year civil war (1991-2002), reconstruction included a great deal of foreign assistance designed to promote peace and rebuild societies and communities as well as infrastructure. Sierra Leone has since avoided a return to civil war in more than two decades and is working to address other pressing issues (like dramatically lowering what was once one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world).  

Irish Aid’s funding is prioritised based on the government’s policy for international development, titled “A Better World” and available online to read in full. This is the policy that outlines Ireland’s commitment to meeting the UN target of 0.7% of our GNI going to development assistance by 2030. 

A Better World is guided by Ireland’s vision for “a more equal, peaceful, and sustainable world.” Those three adjectives aren’t random; they’re core to the criteria by which Irish Aid judges all funding proposals. Irish Aid grants funding to NGOs like Concern for projects that align with the Humanitarian-Development-Peace nexus. It works bilaterally with other governments as well as through organisations like the UN. 

Irish Aid releases an annual report each autumn (usually between late September and early October). In 2024, they reached over 8 million people in 100 countries through €2.35 billion in grants. 72% of that funding targeted forgotten and underfunded crises, including Syria, Yemen, the Sahel, and the Horn of Africa. 

Irish Aid is one of Concern’s largest and most valued institutional donors, and we have partnered with them for over 50 years to deliver programmes that meet our shared vision of a more equitable, sustainable, and peaceful world. With the €35.9 million Irish Aid provided to our programmes in 2024, Concern supported over 3 million people.

Our current partnership with Irish Aid runs from 2023 to 2027 and aims to reach over 4.5 million people across 21 countries, with focuses on supporting emergency response, health and nutrition, livelihoods, education, and gender equality. Part of our funding from Irish Aid is also earmarked to engage the Irish public through awareness-raising and development education, through programmes like Project Us and Concern Debates. 

» Learn more about Concern and Irish Aid