U.S. funding of the International Fund for Ireland could well be ending as a result of the $9 billion spending cuts bill passed by the Republican-controlled Senate and House.
As of Friday, details of where precisely the bill's ax will fall remained unclear. The bill broadly targets overseas aid and public broadcasting.
The IFI would fall into former category.
"No one actually know what these cuts will be, we just know what they could be," said one Capitol Hill source.
U.S. funding for the International Fund for Ireland comes from the Economic Support Fund (ESF) from which the rescission package, the spending cuts bill, eliminated $1.65 billion.
According to a source a substitute amendment to the spending cuts bill specified that the cuts can’t come from economic assistance to Jordan ($1.3 billion), economic assistance to Egypt, or the "countering PRC influence fund."
That refers to a congressionally mandated fund designed to counter the "malign influence" of the People's Republic of China around the globe.
If the entity that was receiving funds does not fall into one of those three categories the chances are that its funding will be severely cut, or eliminated entirely.
In the overall scheme of things the U.S. contribution to the IFI is nothing close to, for example, that Jordanian figure.
Last year the IFI received $4m from the United States to support cross-community projects in Northern Ireland and southern border counties.
The International Fund for Ireland is an independent international organization established in 1986 by the British and Irish governments and is aimed at promoting "economic and social advance" and "to encourage contact, dialogue and reconciliation between nationalists and unionists throughout Ireland."
The fund operates with the co-operation or financial contributions, or both, from the governments of the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as well as the European Union.
Down the years the bulk of the IFI's funding has come from the United States.
