{"id":561,"date":"2012-11-14T09:53:26","date_gmt":"2012-11-14T09:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/crowe-meets-irish-aid-officials-on-misappropriation-of-ugandan-aid\/"},"modified":"2012-11-14T09:53:26","modified_gmt":"2012-11-14T09:53:26","slug":"crowe-meets-irish-aid-officials-on-misappropriation-of-ugandan-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/crowe-meets-irish-aid-officials-on-misappropriation-of-ugandan-aid\/","title":{"rendered":"Crowe meets Irish Aid officials on misappropriation of Ugandan aid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Crowe meets Irish Aid officials on misappropriation of Ugandan aid<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Sinn F\u00e9in spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, Trade and Diaspora, Se\u00e1n  Crowe TD, today met top Irish Aid officials to discuss the  misappropriation of \u20ac4 million of its aid money in Uganda.<\/p>\n<p>Deputy Crowe met the officials when they came to give evidence before  the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking afterwards Deputy Crowe said: \u201cThe meeting with Irish Aid  officials at the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade  was very useful and informative.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe misappropriation of Irish Aid money sent to Uganda is a very  serious issue and it was important that the officials publicly  articulate the financial and audit systems that they have put in place,  which will ensure that such misappropriations will not happen again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo maintain its current support Irish Aid must continue to work  towards being one of the most accountable and transparent government aid  programmes in the world.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe revelation that \u20ac4 million of Irish Aid\u2019s money to the Ugandan  Government was diverted into unauthorised accounts is definitely  worrying and a negative news story for the Irish Aid programme.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe assurance today that the money will be fully returned to the  Irish Government is to be welcomed. There are positives to be taken from  this controversy. The fact that the misappropriation was noticed by  Uganda\u2019s own Auditor General, whose office is strongly supported and  up-skilled by Irish Aid, shows that Irish Aid\u2019s anti-corruption policies  in its partner countries are effective.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe controversy has also renewed focus on the programme and it is  clear to see that Irish Aid, along with other donors, has helped  significantly reduce poverty in Uganda since it became a partner country  of Irish Aid in 1994. In fact poverty has halved in the country over  the last two decades, there are now 5.8 million more students in primary  school since 1997, and the HIV prevalence rate has been reduce from 18%  in the 1990s to 6% today.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIrish Aid needs to ensure it continues to work on its oversight  procedures and its report on the controversy, when it is released in the  coming days, will hopefully clarify most of the questions that Irish  people have in relation to the misappropriation of Irish taxpayers  money.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Crowe meets Irish Aid officials on misappropriation of Ugandan aid Sinn F\u00e9in spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, Trade and Diaspora, Se\u00e1n Crowe TD, today met top Irish Aid officials to discuss the misappropriation of \u20ac4 million of its aid money in Uganda. Deputy Crowe met the officials when they came to give evidence before the Joint [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}