I move:
That a supplementary sum not exceeding £10 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1977, for contributions to International Organisations and for Official Development Assistance, including certain grants-in-aid.
This Supplementary Estimate arises because of certain savings which have been made under Subhead F of the Vote for International Co-operation. It is proposed to transfer these savings to Subhead E of the same vote and, since subhead E is a Grant-in-Aid Fund, Dáil approval is required. However, this Supplementary Estimate does not involve the allocation of any additional grant to the Vote for International Co-operation, other than the token sum of £10.
Subhead F of the Vote for International Co-operation for 1977 concerns payments for the benefit of developing countries arising from our membership of the European Economic Community. In the 1977 Vote, £1.74 million was provided for the purpose of meeting Ireland's contribution to the European Development Fund, established under the Lomé Convention and to the International Fund for Agricultural Development, as well as providing for any contingencies which might arise in the course of the year.
Our contribution to the European Development Fund for 1977 was assessed as 1,620,000 European units of account which, on the basis of the rates of exchange prevailing on the prescribed payment dates, resulted in expenditure of £1,059,475. The International Fund for Agricultural development has recently become operational and the first instalment of our contribution, amounting to £190,000, will be made before the end of the year. At this stage it is considered most unlikely that any additional commitments will arise under this subhead, thus leaving an unexpended balance of £490,525.
I now propose, therefore, that this unexpended sum be transferred from Subhead F to Subhead E of the Vote for International Co-operation. This subhead covers payments to the Grant-in-Aid Fund for bilateral and other aid contributions for developing countries, for which a sum of £975,000 has been provided.
The proposed transfer of additional funds to this subhead would mean that immediate consideration could be given to the commitment of these funds in response to a number of requests for bilateral assistance which would otherwise have to be turned down or at least deferred until next year.
I am also concerned, of course, to ensure that the overall volume of our official development assistance for 1977 will be maintained, as far as possible, at the level of £7.3 million, which was the sum allocated for this purpose at the beginning of the year.
Our programme of bilateral aid, to which it is proposed to transfer these funds, is a small but significant acknowledgement of our willingness to do something more for the Third World than merely fulfil the obligations which arise in this respect from Community membership and from membership of international organisations in the United Nations system. The programme is directed, to a significant extent, towards the poorest countries of the developing world and, more particularly, towards the least well-off sections of the populations of these countries.
To date, five "countries of concentration" for Irish aid have been chosen and these are Lesotho, Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia and India. The number has been limited to five for the moment because the resources available to us are extremely modest in comparison to the problems of development throughout the Third World.
I do not wish to imply, of course, that our aid is or should be channelled exclusively to these five countries. This is not the case. Smaller amounts of assistance are also channelled to other countries in Asia, such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and, in Latin America, to, for example, Colombia.
Ireland is in fact in an excellent position to meet many of the needs of developing countries, and our assistance reflects our own pattern of development, with a heavy emphasis on the supply of technical expertise for the development of agriculture, education and economic infrastructure. And it should not be overlooked that bilateral aid expenditure can provide potentially valuable outlets for Irish goods and services as well as giving many Irish organisations the required overseas experience to enable them to compete for other contracts funded by international development agencies, such as the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme or the European Development Fund, under Community auspices.
On a more general level, the bilateral programme has had the effect of making our own people more aware of the real needs of the developing world and of how interdependent the entire world community has become. Most importantly, we can learn how our own developed society can best cope with the structural changes in the world economy which are inevitable if we are to conduct our relations with developing countries on the basis of dignity and justice. Development co-operation is not simply about the transfer of resources; it is also a two-way process of education and understanding, a process which is vital to the creation of the more equitable world order to which we aspire.