Irish aid agency Goal is seeking up to 25 redundancies after what it describes as a “challenging” year.

The Irish Government withheld millions of euro in funding from the NGO last May on foot of a US government investigation into its Syrian aid programme.

However, it has since released almost €4m for the long-term development work of the agency.

Despite this, Goal said that it has commenced a consultation process for up to 25 potential redundancies across all head office functions in Dublin and London.

The staff were informed of the move yesterday.

Any potential redundancies would take place on or around March 1.

“2016 was a challenging year for GOAL as we sought to continue our relief efforts whilst also taking significant steps to restore the confidence of our donors in our systems, controls and management capacity,” said GOAL general manager Celine Fitzgerald.

“The last number of weeks have seen substantive progress in that regard with Irish Aid taking the welcome decision to resume payments to GOAL of almost €4m in funds due for 2016, and USAID recently approving the awarding of a grant to GOAL for our programmes in Honduras, Ethiopia and Sudan.

“Despite this progress and ongoing discussions with our major donors in respect of future funding we need to develop a more sustainable cost base to support our ongoing humanitarian relief efforts and regrettably, this is likely to involve some redundancies.”