Ireland’s involvement in international development has become a significant aspect of its foreign economic policy. Its engagement has moved from priorities that were largely domestically determined in the early 1970s and based on bilateral relationships between Ireland as donor and the recipient programme countries, toward priorities and involvements within a multilateral policy framework. This has come about through Ireland’s increasing engagement with international organizations, particularly the UN and the EU. However as the boundaries blur between Overseas Development Aid (ODA) policy and shared global goals, such as addressing climate breakdown and mitigating the scale of international distributive inequality, this can lead to tensions within countries about the implications of international commitments for the priorities at play in domestic politics. This is evident where Ireland’s ODA-driven commitments in the international field are in tension with domestic policy priorities, but also where tension arises in the area of national economic development policy.
