I welcome the Minister of State and congratulate him on his responsibility for development.
When it comes to speaking about Africa and the underdevelopment and diffificulties of the people living in vast areas of that country very often we run out of superlatives to describe the hardships. The worst drought in 50 years is currently threatening 23 million people with starvation and death in the Horn of Africa in countries such as Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia. What makes the current situation even worse than before is that countries that up to now have begun to be able to cope with their own food requirements, such as Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Nambia and South Africa, are all being affected by this drought. South Africa was usually a country that could supply food to its neighbours but now they too will have to import food for the coming season. Very little food is available for their own use, let alone left over for neighbouring stricken countries.
We do not need the harrowing reminders of television pictures and newspaper articles to highlight for us in the developed world the horrors and the magnitude of the catastrophe which can occur when these numbers of people are threatened with starvation and death. The world community has a moral obligation to respond immediately to this crisis and very substantial food aid supplies must be made available in Africa if many hundreds of thousands of people are not to die of starvation. Crops have failed all over and the need for food aid will continue until the rains come and the new harvest grows.
Ireland, in its own right, must respond to this disastrous situation. I know the Minister has already received at least one application for £100,000 worth of aid from Trócaire and I am sure he has received other applications for assistance. Trócaire tell me that they are inundated with requests from countries like Malawi, Ethiopia and Somalia and they cannot meet all the requests.
Despite the general disappointment expressed in this House and outside the bilateral aid budget for 1992 has been cut, there is £1 million available in that budget for disaster relief. I am asking the Minister to release that money immediately.
The situation is so grave that I am urging the Minister to propose at the next Council of Development Ministers, the setting up of a special programme for Africa similar to that set up in 1991. This programme must make a commitment, as it did in 1991, of an extra 400,000 tonnes of food aid. A number of countries, such as South Africa and Zimbabwe, will have to import millions of tonnes of food to feed their people, thus using very badly needed hard currency. Zambia will have to import 800,000 tonnes of food costing, according to one newspaper, £171 million. These countries do not have that kind of money. It is reckoned in Namibia that they have lost 80 per cent of their commercial maize crop. Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland have all announced that they will need to import food.
This is a crisis which is perhaps beyond any that has as yet had to be faced on the continent of Africa. The responsibility rests on the Minister and his colleagues at the Council of Development Ministers to answer these calls from the threatened 23 million people. I hope the Minister will be able to make his mark as being the one who proposed and guided through the EC this special programme.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Andrews, has already spoken of wanting to see Ireland play its part towards alleviating poverty, famine and disease in the Third World. I hope these words will be put into action.