Irish Times, 2nd April 2008

Madam,

Yet more evidence of the corruption that defines the Ugandan political sphere has recently come to light. Of the 319 MPs who received money from the state's Constituency Development Fund, a pot worth over 10 million Ugandan shillings, only three have been able to give a satisfactory explanation to the chief internal auditor as to where the money ended up.

Although the Irish Government has ceased giving direct budgetary support to the Ugandan government, the vast majority of the EUR44.8 million allocated to Uganda through our aid programme in 2006 was routed through government structures. The same MPs who cannot account for their constituency money are supposed to be the watchdogs for government spending.

Surely this is not the kind of structure our Government should be routing taxpayers' money through.

Yours, etc,

JOHN O'SHEA