(Limerick East): I move amendment No. 1.
In page 2, line 20, to delete "Finance" and substitute "Foreign Affairs".
This amendment relates to the definitions section and is put down to suggest that the appropriate Minister, as defined in the definitions section, should be changed from the Minister for Finance to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. I do this because, as the Minister for Finance has said on Second Stage, the paid-in element will be classified as official development assistance and will be payable from Central Fund services. Since the Department of Foreign Affairs have responsibility for our official development assistance programme I think it is more appropriate that the Minister, in the definitions section, should be the Minister for Foreign Affairs and that consequential changes should be made in the Bill to make the appropriate Minister the Minister for Foreign Affairs. The Minister in his reply has not clarified whether a separate allocation will be moved in the budget when the Estimates are amended, including a sum of at least £275,000 in the Vote for the Office of the Minister for Finance to cover this aid.
Many of the contributions here today seem to take it for granted that the 10 per cent payable in cash initially would be drawn from the official development assistance subhead in the Vote of the Department of Foreign Affairs. If this is so and the Minister has not yet clarified it I think that is another reason for suggesting that the appropriate Minister is the Minister for Foreign Affairs and not the Minister for Finance. I can appreciate how it ended up within the remit of the Minister for Finance, as MIGA is a subsidiary agency of the World Bank and the Minister is a governor of the World Bank and Finance Ministers are the Ministers who are responsible for World Bank activities in their capacity as governors of the international body. In our particular circumstances there is an argument to be made for centralising control of aid and of MIGA in the Department of Foreign Affairs.