She was speaking at last week's joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs, during which O'Donnell, Labour's Michael D Higgins and Fianna Fail's Paschal Mooney engaged in strong criticism of Goal and its chief executive John O'Shea.

During a discussion on aid to Ethiopia, O'Donnell said the area "is so complex that it is difficult to have radio-style debates, particularly when players like Goal tend to come out with tabloid generalisations about corrupt governments in Africa, and how the Irish government is allegedly funding them. That is false and dangerous propaganda".

She added that if people regularly hear the "falsehood" that the government is funding corrupt governments, "we lose aid and will lose support among our own population for it".

O'Donnell accepted that there are "governance issues" in Africa but added: "We who know about these matters are constantly having to defend our programme against . . . let us not avoid this . . . one person who has an agenda that the Irish government should pull out of Ethiopia and Uganda.

This is an exercise that Mr O'Shea has been carrying out for many years."

Michael D Higgins said the campaign to cut off aid to Ethiopia was "irresponsible", "ill-informed" and "extremely dangerous". Higgins yesterday added that Irish aid to Ethiopia was totally transparent and 97% of it went to projects that deal with the poorest of the poor.

Senator Paschal Mooney said he did not want his remarks interpreted as an attack on an aid agency doing very important work but he criticised O'Shea for not taking up an invitation to present his case to the committee. "It's all very well to do sit on the sidelines, to snipe and attack. I ask John O'Shea to come out into the open, to talk to the people's representatives on this committee, to put his case and fight it. . . For the moment, disappointingly, he has gone down in my estimation, specifically with regard to what is happening on this issue and Ethiopia."

However, an unrepentant John O'Shea yesterday said he had no interest in the side issues that get discussed at Oireachtas committees or in the committee members' points of view. "I have only one central issue that I want discussed and that is to request the Irish government to find a more appropriate way to get funding through to the poor of Ethiopia.

"The international community have taken 450m away from the Ethiopian government, yet the Irish government have not taken any. That is morally indefensible. If an Irish aid worker had been one of the 83 people massacred by the Ethiopian government would we continue to route money through that government? You can not deal with a government that kills its own people, " he said.