On the occasion of such Bills being debated in the House there is usually not an enormous attendance in the Chamber. I have referred to that on more than one occasion. On the surface the Bill appears to be a technical piece of legislation. It is indeed a formal Bill like similar pieces of legislation that have been debated here. It simply enables us to make the contribution required at this time. Nevertheless, it raises a number of fundamental issues. On previous occasions when welcoming similar Bills I have raised a number of questions and I should like to raise them again. I should like to assure the Minister that I am not opposing the Bill but a number of issues of fact could be easily hidden by the Bill and by the Minister's speech.
I should like to know if the Irish contribution, with the other contributions that will be made, is in part a replenishment of the shortfall in the contribution of the United States. Is it not true to say that both super powers at a time when they are increasing their expenditure on armaments — thankfully they have moved to the point of holding discussions on disarmament — have, since the early seventies, put a ceiling on their contributions in the area of development aid? Will the Minister say if, since the end of the seventies, the contribution of the super powers towards the development area have fallen? Will the Minister accept that the total fund available for development purposes has fallen?
The Bill refers to the least developed countries, the LDCs as they have been referred to in the technology language of development study literature. When Tim Bergin was writing about this at the beginning of the seventies he said that we should be clear about whom we are speaking, that we were speaking about people who live on 30 cents a day or less, if one could call that living. He also said that we were addressing countries where, in their populations, perhaps 40,000 children, if one aggregated the total child death in such countries, die every day. We are talking about countries for whom the resources necessary to produce one jet fighter would provide all the basic aids in clean water, shelter, food and education to the end of the century. There is an inextricable link between armament production and development. The resources deflected to armaments production deprive such countries of development aid. That is not what is before us this morning but development issues are inextricably linked with issues of armaments production not least because the principal customers at the armaments production shows in the western world are Third World countries.
We are producing armaments that put the planet in danger, exporting instruments of death in the form of armaments to the Third World, and, at the same time, freezing our development aid and then allowing it to fall. It is a long time since Willy Brandt referred to this dilemma and made an appeal to the world community from a group that included people who could hardly be described as radicals, people such as Ted Heath even though he may be perceived as wet by herself. The fact is that the appeal was to self interest but even appeals to self interest failed. The idea of having an impoverished south which would create a south of poor customers and so on did not budge anybody.
There are a number of very specific issues which I would like the Minister to address in his reply. What was the extent of the contribution of the United States and the USSR over the last several terms of replenishment? What is the gap and to what extent had the other countries to come forward to fill the gap left by the super powers? Lest we get carried away into some heady fit of self congratulation we must remember that what is required in the Bill is mandatory on us; it is not the decision of the Government of the day but represents a commitment we gave several years ago. That commitment was in two parts, our original decision to be bound and the second decision to move from the second part to the first section of the International Development Association itself.
My second question arises from the politicisation of the IDA. The consequences of the politicisation of the IDA have been to establish principles of selectivity in selecting poorer countries and in approving projects.
There is reference in the Minister's speech to sub-Saharan Africa. The people who worked in the section of the IDA dealing with the World Bank and other institutions decided on projects in terms of their development impact. It is attested by those who worked in this section, when interviewed on worldwide television, that one of the most sordid developments of the 1980s has been the politicisation of the international financial structures.
The Minister's speech contains a reflection of the politicisation of which I speak. It is contained in the change in terms and conditions. The Minister stated:
There was also agreement that the character of IDA as a lender primarily for investment purposes should continue, but that greater emphasis should be placed on fostering policy reforms and economic adjustment through sector loans and structural adjustment operations.
Translated into the language of those in the field in Africa, that means that where the market economy and private enterprise are allowed to prosper, as for example in the Kenyan development area, there would be one acceptable context. I am merely using Kenya as an example. In neighbouring Tanzania where people are pursuing the villagisation scheme of Julius Nyrere, that kind of development would be looked upon with less favour. Hidden in that remark and in the thinking at Paris there is a non-acceptance of the rights of those countries among the LDCs who have pursued indigenous forms of development. They are being told they will have to meet new conditions and that the closer they come to meeting the conditions of the marketplace the more likely they will be to get aid. That message was addressed to the "37 cents a day" population. It was that thinking which was behind first the threat and then the reality of the reduced contribution from the United States. We had to rush in to help fill the gap.
It may be asked whether my comments are ideological. That is a trash comment. I use my words carefully. What we are speaking about are conditions being put into the structure and flow of aid to the least developed countries when their very poverty should justify the assistance in itself.
There is reference in the Minister's speech to the Paris talks. Am I correct in interpreting the Paris talks as beginning with the reality of the American contribution and that the decision on that contribution affected every other discussion after the talks? This is a question the Minister simply must answer. My second question relates to the interpretation of the conditions. Are they not an attempt to impose western market thinking as a condition for class II participants in the IDA?
We are not here debating the whole issue of development aid, but I hope we will have an opportunity of addressing these issues on some other occasion. I am the temporary chairman of the ad hoc committee on development aid. The reality is that the Joint Committee on Development Co-operation has been abolished. It was a committee to which every single development agency in Ireland, as well as many international agencies and a number of international experts, gave evidence. It made contributions and published reports. It looked at the conditions of returned development workers and at the conditions and structures of charitable gatherings and so forth. The committee no longer exists. I hope it will be good news to the Minister that we do not see it as our role to attack any party's policy. We represent the fact that there is in all parts of this House an anxiety that this forum should continue, even if only on an ad hoc basis. I hope we can go out of existence when the Taoiseach allows the Joint Committee on Development Co-operation to be established formally. We will go out of business on the day he makes that decision. If he does not make it, we will continue staffing the committee from our own resources so that there will be a forum to which those interested in development may come.
When I look at the level of funding and think of the reports I have read on the Paris talks, I have to put matters in some context. The electorate will ask how much our contribution enables us to help. There are three principal strangleholds of a non-military kind on the least developed countries. The first of these concerns debt, a problem which has not been resolved by the international community, particularly by the lending countries. There are also issues of trade which have not been significantly improved. The relationship between energy imports and the primary commodity prices paid to the producing countries has not changed in their favour. Some of the LDCs have no exports. The third question is the extent to which the aid we are supposedly offering is tied aid.
The IDA is reaching a crisis point but it cannot be seen to go out of existence. It must be seen to be doing something. It is in danger, however, of assuming a cosmetic status if politicisation continues, if the imposition of conditions on their loans continues and if, in addition, the overall contextual environment of trade and aid and militarisation continues to work against the LDCs.
I do not want to be academic about these matters. The Irish citizen contributes heavily by comparison with citizens of other European countries. The question the citizen asks is to what extent his or her contribution is helping. On the debt question alone, we have had a series of individual reschedulings motivated as much by the consequences for the internal banking systems of the lending countries as by anything else. We have seen no shift in relation to the debt itself. Debt is not a fiscal matter only. It is the historical legacy of trade and other relationships which has accrued. There is, therefore, a moral obligation on the developed world — if there is such a thing as international morality — to change the debt relationship in a way that is beyond rescheduling or the simple shifting of interest payments.
We are dealing here mostly with sub-Saharan Africa. Let us consider for a moment the Latin world. We are asking the people of Brazil to pay 60 per cent of their gross domestic product to stay in the same place, even in relation to the interest payments on their debt. The Mexican Government had to face the question of whether they would allow more than half their total product to be spent on servicing debt. Is the problem therefore, the lack of developed capacity to meet interest payments? It must not be seen in that way but rather in a wider structure. There is no evidence, I am afraid, of such thinking.
I notice that the Minister for Finance is present in the House and that it is always he who handles this legislation rather than the Minister for Foreign Affairs or his Minister of State. The second point I wish to make is that you have to place IDA lending in the context of the commercial banking world lending to the countries involved. Here is my assertion and I would be glad to be proved wrong. Is it not a fact that total commercial bank lending to the countries which will be receiving this has practically dried up, has almost totally ceased? Given that situation and with IDA money coming with increased conditions the countries involved, the least developed countries, are more and more dependent on aid.
We must now move to the question of the character of that aid. Greater reliance on aid in terms of the internal dynamics of a suffering country with very little export crops and such export crops as they have being used to pay different kinds of interest on debt has meant an increasing struggle for existence particularly by women in Third World countries who are not in that export producing sector, however tiny it may be. Not only have we seen a decline in the super power contribution and a greater reliance on aid but also the conditions on aid are surfacing in relation to the IDA and we are now further removed from these realities.
I am able to speak about a comparison with the Tanzanian and Kenyan experience because I was a member of the Joint Committee on Co-operation with Developing Countries. I visited those countries with other Deputies including the former Deputy Nora Owen and the former Minister of State who is present in the House. We now have no embassy in Nairobi and if you are interested in the Sudan there is no office you could go to in Khartoum even though we developed and prepared an office there and were ready to run it. Therefore, we are looking at all of these problems at a distance and it behoves us to be more vigilant than ever.
I remark once again on this empty Chamber when discussing an issue of such great and urgent moral importance, an issue which challenges our very humanity and challenges us to take a stand on whether we as a small Chamber in a small island country, representing a very small proportion of the world's population, are here to cast quasi-amateur eyes on the international banking system or are here to reflect the moral concern and interdependence of the world's population where so many people needlessly die but where, if every child was pre-vaccinated before the end of this century, so many would live and where 75 per cent of the world's population who have access to 17 per cent of the world's exportable resources are represented by the four Deputies who are now in this Chamber of 166. This makes us ask questions as to where our morality of politics lies and so forth. I must say on behalf of my party that we are not opposing this Bill. I am simply placing it in the context of the development thinking that exists within the Labour Party to which I have been contributing for a number of years.
I am raising very specific questions for the Minister. I just want to raise a few small points now with him in connection with his own speech. He mentioned, and this relates to one of my other questions, that while the bank lends to a wide range of developing countries more or less commercial terms — here is the paradox — the IDA provides highly concessionary assistance and concentrates this assistance on the poorest of the developing countries. The thinking of the IDA was always seen as qualitatively different to the thinking of the general lending strategy of the World Bank. I have stated that that core thinking has changed IDA thinking and the conditions of international aid qualitatively.
The Minister went on to say that while continuing to give priority to investment lending the IDA has in recent years also become deeply involved in lending in support of policy reform and economic adjustment and an increasing proportion of its resources are now devoted to sector and structural adjustment loans. That is my evidence on the ground in relation to the change in the sovereignty of the recipient countries in terms of choosing economic development strategies. I deal with realities and with the people who are without the wells and so forth. The reality is what I have seen in the attitude of the international institutions to the countries of Tanzania and Kenya.
The Minister dealt also with the question of replenishments. Let us hear how the gaps arose. Let me say in this regard that our assistance in this Bill is mandatory. On another day we will debate the most shameful, disgraceful and immoral cut of all, the cut in development aid assistance in the Estimates. It was scandalous and it was not done with the political will of the people. It was done against the expressed will of the people because in every survey they have said that even if economic conditions were bad at home they still wanted to give to the countries which were least developed, the countries in greatest need. There was no political mandate for such an act and I say that the real reason it happened was because the development section of the Department of Foreign Affairs had such low clout with the Department of Finance. The Department of Finance never got as far as incorporating in their thinking the thinking of the development section of the Department of Foreign Affairs. I am inclined, as my former colleague Conor Cruise O'Brien used to say, to the benign model.
The Minister dealt with the occasions when special replenishments and sums were necessary in addition to the conventional or usual replenishments. Perhaps the Minister will say what were the circumstances. I think I know them. I have already given them to the House. The circumstances were when some of the major donors did not meet their contributions. The Minister made specific reference to the Paris negotiations. We do not have in this House an Oireachtas committee on foreign affairs, something about which I have questioned the Taoiseach ceaselessly for several weeks and months. Therefore I have no opportunity, except on occasions such as this, to ask what was the character of the discussions which took place in Paris about this issue; as to what was the position taken by category 2 countries versus category 1 countries, as to what was the discussion on the question of the United States' contribution and as to what was the debate within category 2. The Minister says that he is pleased, and I agree with him, that we will move from £11.5 billion to £12.4 billion. Yet, in proportionate terms that is very far short of what the recipient countries were asking. From sources within the recipient countries who are in contact with me I know they submitted position papers in relation to conditions that might or might not be attached to loans. On page 3, paragraph 3 of his speech the Minister says:
In the effort to reach this level of replenishment, members agreed to some hardening of IDA's loan terms with a view to permitting the faster recycling of much-needed funds.
Is this not saying that what was involved in that debate was that the more there was market thinking in the recipient countries the quicker one was likely to see the money back and it could be lent out again? It was taking the very basic needs, thinking of the least developed countries, which is reflected in the women in their villages more than in the men — because 90 per cent of the women are involved in basic needs productions and the males are overwhelmingly more involved in producing that tiny section of the export crops — and turning the thinking behind international assistance to the least developed countries into the same kind of thinking as one would have operating in a commercial bank lending to a speculative investor. That is the drift of the argument and I want to hear more about it if I am wrong.
The Minister says in relation to a variety of other issues:
Agreement was also reached on a variety of other issues. Members agreed to continue using existing criteria, such as relative poverty and population size, for allocating IDA's resources but to give greater emphasis to economic performance in order to ensure the most effective use of IDA's funds.
Is that not the same thing again? It is the politicisation of these least developed countries through the imposition of economic market model thinking.
The Minister refers to sub-Saharan Africa. I totally agree with the Minister and I am grateful to him for putting this in. Within the general category of least developed countries the specific problems of sub-Saharan Africa are very severe. One of the problems is that by the year 2,000 it might be impossible for some of these countries to be populated at all because of changing physical and climatic conditions. The Minister also said:
There was also agreement that the character of IDA as a lender primarily for investment purposes should continue, but that greater emphasis should be placed on fostering policy reforms and economic adjustment through sector loans and structural adjustment operations.
This fills me with pessimism that I was right about what was the drift of the IDA within the World Bank. The Minister may like to explain the implications of the right which donor countries have. We have been a donor country since 1973. Donor countries have the right to lodge non-negotiable non-interest-bearing demand notes in lieu of cash payments. While that facilitates the donors it places short term difficulties in relation to hard currency on the recipient countries. They are under the stranglehold of debt and interest payments which require hard currency but at the same time the aid which is coming in, however twisted or conditional a form, is something to which they do not have access in relation to meeting their needs. Given the totality of their relationships to the outer world, this is an advantage for the lending country but a disadvantage for the recipient country. This is very much true in relation to the time period involved. The Minister in his speech says:
Actual cash payments under the replenishment will be phased over the years 1988 to 1999.
Compare that period of time with the debt negotiating period of time on offer to these least developed countries.
I have raised a number of issues. It is not my intention to make tedious or repetitive arguments but I am very conscious of how few occasions we have to address these issues that affect the least developed countries and their relationship to the developed world. The reason I have said so much about the financial aspects is that the Minister for Finance is here. We are in an atmosphere in the international financial discussions in which these differences are not surfacing at all, and if they are they are highly residual to other notions. For example, it is a curiousity that our neighbouring island, led now by this paragon of conservatism is going to run up £1.5 billion of a deficit and the US is running an enormous trade deficit, playing beggar my neighbour, between themselves and the other economies, with the reluctant Japanese economy and the West German economy occasionally emitting rumbles and saying that they refuse to take the cards that have been dealt to them and so forth. It is under this sordid shadow that this regularly goes on.
We must remind ourselves of the figures. About 40,000 children are needlessly dying every day and women are having one child after another hoping that a male child will live so as to become a migrant worker and bring home his earnings to the village. We are talking about a situation where water, sanitation or housing is not available. We are not talking about a remote depopulated place. We are talking about the part of the planet where 75 per cent of the world live in poverty to which we the west and the north are exporting death. We are exporting death to them through armaments. They have access to less than one-fifth of the world resources. In the other part of the world 25 per cent of the world's population compete in a race of death and at the same time live in economies structured on the principles of capitalism and debt that have impoverished the other part of the world. What we as a small country must do is not only to consider the reality of our small contribution which we repeat from time to time but to ask ourselves questions as to the framework of principles within which we make that contribution. It is in that sense I have made this contribution. I have asked a number of direct questions of the Minister which I hope he will find time to answer in his reply.
