Perhaps it is the impression the Minister has been creating —he looks like the real professional— of having been even a greater period in office. That was by way of saying perhaps that the Minister will, in replying, be in a position to indicate some answers to some of the questions I asked some time ago about the Council for Development, the whole question of how he sees the role of aid, and the co-ordination of the delivery of either Irish skills, money, charity from Trocaire or whatever through the Minister's agencies and the Government.
This Bill would be a part of that. I would follow what Deputy R. Ryan said with regard to our obligation to recognise the reality of global poverty. Unfortunately, appeals to the generosity of mankind do not have a very good track record. We do not have to go very far outside the country, or this building, to see levels of poverty totally unacceptable today. A figure of 25 per cent has been used. Appeals to common humanity or to the morsel of pity to which Deputy Ryan referred have not been successful, with people begging on the streets, not of Marrakesh or Dar es Salaam but on the streets of Dublin who are passed by every day. Therefore, simply calling on that sentiment alone unfortunately will not have the effect that Deputy Ryan believes it could or should have.
I should like to point out two things which make it obligatory, in our self-interests as well-fed and wealthy people, that this aid be given and why indeed we should increase it. There is first the moral one, which is self evident and which nobody would dispute. Secondly there is the point of global instability. It amazes me that it has not intensified already. But certainly it will by the end of this century if the growth rates for population and urbanisation continue the way they are. There are certain small groups of disaffected people who feel they have been totally excluded from any share of the world's wealth, or indeed from any prospect of participating in it. Much of it belongs to them in the first place. It is not that they are poor; it is just that they do not control their own resources.
If the current economic system in the Third World, as originally structured by western imperialism, is not changed radically, then groups like the PLO, or people modelling themselves on the PLO, can hold up our entire developed world to total ransom as a result of modern communications and technology. The real risk to stability of what we would regard as the developing world is that the technology is now existent for very small groups of people to potentially hold to ransom vast sections of our society. Lest there be any public resistance—I think we have a consensus within the House among working politicians and particularly among people who have some knowledge either at first hand or from study of the extent of the problem on which Deputy Ryan has given figures—we have a leadership obligation to explain to our people, to those who perhaps might doubt the necessity for it, that if they do not accept the moral obligation there is one underneath the counter which has far greater force and strength, that is, the old one of self-preservation.
We cannot continue to live in a world that accumulates butter mountains in Western Europe and stands by apparently powerless while people starve to the extent they do every day. That is the nonsense of the global economic system obtaining. There are too many people who will defend it on the grounds that you cannot replace it with anything else because you have greater problems. For the people who are starving, dying, without any control over their own resources, niceties and arguments about the difficulties of working within a mixed economy will fall on very deaf ears but very hungry mouths. Those people within our society who resent the granting of this money—on the grounds that we have 25 per cent of our own population poor—will have to be made aware, through the leadership of working politicians, of the realities of global politics in that context.
The Minister alone within the Government has primary responsibility in this area. I look forward not merely to one contribution but to a continuation of contributions from the Minister over the next three to four years on the responsibility of this country to the rest of the world. I would do it in this context: that as a non-aligned nation —I am glad to see that the Minister takes a positive interpretation of the word "non-aligned"—we are a far more acceptable vehicle of development aid, be it money or more importantly skill, to many Third World countries than others such as Belgium, Holland, France or Britain whose hands are still very dirty with colonialism, whose pockets are still being lined by the benefits of neo-colonialism. These countries give out aid—and Mother England is as big an offender as anybody else—on the explicit understanding that any aid given has to be spent in such a way that the maximum benefit accrues back to these countries. That is some aid—when one gives something with one hand and one ties up the country in terms of supplies, spare parts, materials and so on with one's own domestic market.
I would hope that the Minister, in celebrating the fact that we now have Part I status—and I am glad that that decision was taken because it would have been an insult to the rest of the world to maintain that we did not qualify for Part I status—would make it his business in coming years to ensure that the capacity of Irish professional skills is properly made available through the International Development Association or the World Bank. I do not have the figures to hand at present. From my knowledge, which is limited —although I am reasonably well informed in regard to the area of professional services, particularly in regard to the ACP countries and the Lomé Convention—of Irish attempts to export professional skills to countries requiring and seeking them, I am not satisfied that as much use has been made of them by these global agencies as could have been made.
If there is a fault there it is that of successive Governments and also that of the professions here in that they were not prepared to get involved. There seems to be an apparent contradiction that, on the one hand, as a professional architect and planner I can argue for such professionals in Ireland getting a bigger share of work that would originate from an aid fund such as this Bill is contributing to and, on the other hand, calling for a lack of selfishness in the donation of moneys. But while recognising there is a commercial incentive for either the State or private sector to become involved in such work, there is a political, ideological argument for encouraging Irish professional skills, whether it be in health, social work or in the construction industry, to become involved in the Third World countries through aid programmes such as the International Development Association on the precise grounds that we are not as commercially aligned or integrated as would be professional concerns in other industrial countries.
Let me give the House an example of what I mean. As a result of informative conversations I had with some people in the ESB about how they were received in certain Third World countries in specifying electrical projects and so on, they advanced as one of the reasons for their success in getting such contracts the fact that they were able to point out quite clearly that they were not the front-runners for some industrial manufacturing consortium or industry at home, that they would specify machinery and plant from different countries of origin, with different kinds of characteristics, spare part requirements and so on the basis of that machinery being suitable for the system required in the recipient country; whereas in the past the fact was that British and German consultants came to a country, designed an electrical system for an area and specified either total German or British components. In a delivery system of that kind with a whole range of different machinery no one country will have the best type of generator, the best distribution system and so on. There will be variations. The unique professional skill that the Irish professions, either semi-State or private, would have is that, because we do not have a commitment to such industrial bases or consortia we are in a much freer position to give unprejudiced and more professional help and skill to developing countries.
An important point in this regard is that most of us have come of age in a country that is still only developing. In professional terms people in the ESB, in Bord na Móna or in the private sector have direct experience of building more or less from scratch. That is an experience in terms of taking a country from an underdeveloped status into a developing role that very few professional designers have in their own countries, whether in Britain, Germany or France. In personal terms there is a far greater reservoir of real skill in Irish-trained professionals but that reservoir for whatever reason was not adequately recognised by the international agencies until recently. As a result of this Bill becoming law and the contribution being made, I hope the Minister through CTT—the relevant agency in this regard—the DEVCO operation generally and in conjunction with the CII and the boards concerned will make it his business to ensure that much more emphasis and enthusiasm is generated for this area. It is not just for the obvious commercial reasons. I believe it will improve our capacity as a country to solve our own problems if we acquire experience overseas.
In replying to this debate I hope the Minister will be able to indicate what timetable he has with regard to bringing together the various interests involved in the whole question of development aid. Has he any additional proposals with regard to how participation in development aid can be improved and extended by Irish people? I do not want to appear too sectional in my concern in this matter but obviously by virtue of my qualifications and professional involvement I have knowledge of a narrow spectrum of the whole area. There are other groups outside my sphere who have demonstrated competence and commitment to the satisfaction of international agencies and such commitment was totally beyond what people had expected of them. I am referring in particular to the activities of Concern in Bangladesh which are highly regarded by a number of people who have come into contact with them. Foreigners were surprised at the extent of the skill and professionalism of the Irish aid operation because of its size relative to the Irish economy. The number of people we have in a voluntary capacity overseas per population is enormous compared with many other countries. I am referring to traditional religious missionaries, most of whom are essentially involved in secular work of teaching and health in addition to the religious vocation as well as to those who are there in a totally secular sense, who are not members of religious orders.
We welcome the Bill. We hope the Minister will positively undertake in the next year or two the obligation to explain and to advocate increased participation by the Irish people in the process of granting aid to poorer countries. In particular I hope he will expound on the philosophical position of non-alignment by ensuring that whatever aid is given is given in an open-handed sense. By all means let there be an attempt to ensure maximum benefit for Irish professionals and Irish firms but the aid should be given on the clear understanding that it is not tied or conditional aid in the way it has been conditional aid from some of the traditional industrial countries.
Quite frankly, the kind of money the World Bank, IDA or UNCTAD are giving is chicken-feed in terms of real need and in terms of the amount spent on arms each year. The real threat to global stability is increasing rather than decreasing. The example that horrified me of just what the rate of growth outside the western world was at an international conference I attended four years ago. Somebody described an illegal squatter township that had grown up outside Mexico City —from the legal point of view it did not exist—and it had reached a size in terms of population of 500,000 people, just bigger than Dublin city. Mexico City is the first city that is likely to have a population of 20 million by the end of the century.
The projections of such figures in terms of impact are so enormous by Irish standards that they are beyond domestic comprehension. The Minister has a responsibility to ensure public acceptance of aid to those in need. Irrespective of our own poverty problems he must get the acceptance of the people to increase the money we give to the Third World on the lines of unconditional aid as I suggested at the outset. We support the Bill.
