The Government welcomes this opportunity to debate the current situation in Central America. We have all seen the harrowing images of the floods and mudslides which have engulfed lives and homes throughout Central America. It is only right, therefore, that our concern, which reflects the anxieties of the Irish people and indeed all Members of this House, be voiced in the Dáil.
Tropical Storm Mitch, which during the first week of November reached hurricane strength, has devastated much of Central America. In meteorological terms this is the fourth most powerful storm of the 20th century. After battering the Atlantic coastline, it swept inland and reached Central America's Pacific coasts. Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador took the brunt of the blow.
Over four million people are suffering the effects of the storm, many of them in isolated communities, some of which are still inaccessible to rescue teams. Prolonged rain and winds of up to 300 kilometres per hour hit Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador. Almost all the roads connecting the Central American countries have been damaged while the capital cities, Tegucigalpa in Honduras and Managua in Nicaragua, are badly damaged. The damage to infrastructure generally is complicating the relief effort.
The impact of Hurricane Mitch on the economies of Central America has yet to be fully analysed. Preliminary estimates of damage to key sectors such as agriculture, road networks and supply systems indicate that years of economic growth have been wiped out with inevitable consequences for the living standards of the affected nations.
In Honduras, a week of relentless rain, floods and landslides had a very severe impact. Over 7,000 people are reported dead, a further 11,000 are still missing while more than 2,000,000 people are affected. According to the Honduran Government emergency committee, Hurricane Mitch was the most destructive natural phenomenon to hit Honduras this century. Drinking water is not available, food is scarce and the supply of electricity is erratic. Almost 600,000 people, 10 per cent of the population, are thought to have lost their homes. The President of Honduras has declared that about 60 per cent of the infrastructure has been destroyed and the storm has been designated the worst natural disaster to hit Honduras in recent times.
In Nicaragua, over 4,300 people are reported dead or missing. Figures will become more accurate, and are likely to rise considerably as communications improve and access roads are cleared, since rescue teams continue to face difficulties in reaching many of the worst hit areas. The worst affected areas are west of the capital Managua, close to the border with Honduras.
The single worst incident saw the collapse of the Casita Volcano which led to a massive mudslide. Subsequently, a wall of mud up to three kilometres wide devastated an area of 80 square kilometres which included three towns. The bulk of the country remains out of road communication with the capital, owing to the collapse of many bridges.
The Governments of Honduras and Nicaragua have declared a national emergency and, together with Guatemala and El Salvador, have appealed for international assistance.
The International Federation of the Red Cross has issued a preliminary appeal for international assistance, although they will update this appeal as needs increase. In addition, national Red Cross societies throughout the region have mobilised up to 4,000 volunteers.
The United Nations has activated its Disaster Assessment and Co-ordination Team which is currently in the region reporting to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs which is acting as a channel for immediate relief needs. The UN Development Programme, UNICEF and the World Food Programme have contributed £335,000 and technical assistance from their own existing resources. The UNDP and OCHA have announced the establishment of an inter-agency task force to focus on a comprehensive approach to humanitarian assistance. As of 9 November, the total cash donations reported to the UN, including Ireland's assistance, totalled $41 million in cash grants along with large contributions of relief goods and technical assistance.
The European Commission has approved a package of £5.4 million for Central American countries struck by Hurricane Mitch and will provide an additional £7.8 million in the coming week. The aid, which the European Community Humanitarian Office will manage, will be disbursed in Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador through NGOs and the Red Cross. The funding will cover food aid, temporary shelter, water purification products and medical inputs. ECHO will continue to monitor the situation closely. The European Commission has earmarked a further £10.2 million for rehabilitation work.
At Monday's General Affairs Council, Commissioner Bonino announced her intention to travel to the region to review the situation. In total, the European Union and its member states have donated more than $84 million to the emergency effort.
The World Bank plans to advance a scheduled disbursement of approximately $20 million to support the Honduran Government's immediate needs for financial support. In addition, it will immediately make available funds from a recently approved US $45 million loan for the Social Investment Fund Project to meet communities' needs for the emergency rehabilitation of basic infrastructure in rural areas affected by floods. In total, the World Bank has announced it will make approximately £200 million available for immediate support to the countries affected.
Ireland has responded quickly and generously by approving a total of £400,000 from the Emergency Humanitarian Assistance Fund administered by my Department. While this funding is primarily focused on Honduras and Nicaragua, assistance to other affected countries in the region is also included. Ireland's assistance is being disbursed through Trócaire, APSO, the International Federation of the Red Cross and the World Health Organisation. Trócaire and APSO have spent many years carrying out excellent long-term development projects throughout the region. These projects have now literally been swept away as the years of painstaking development were destroyed in one blow. Staff have been redeployed in the short-term to maintain some level of essential services to the people.
APSO, through its volunteers based in Honduras, is organising the supply of food, medicine and clothes for the jungle communities with which they work, although the logistical problems resulting from damage to the road network, and the poor communications, continue to hamper their efforts. I understand an initial group of medical and logistics experts recruited from the rapid response register, established earlier this year by APSO with the support of my Department, has been dispatched to the region. They will support its relief effort in the region.
APSO continues its efforts to supply isolated communities with food, clothing and medicines. It has distributed 15 tons of food and medicines to communities on the North Coast and the Mosquito Jungle. Further shipments are being prepared. The Department is keeping in close touch with APSO which has reported the urgent need for fast growing rice and bean seed in the hope of producing some food within the next three months. As Honduras is about to enter the dry season there are but a few areas where it is feasible to plant at this late stage. For the rest of the country, which has lost between 70 and 90 per cent of this year's harvest depending on the area affected, food distribution will have to continue for the next nine months until the 1999 harvest starts to come on the market. To avoid duplication, APSO is co-ordinating closely with other international agencies, particularly Trócaire. I have approved grants totalling £80,000 to APSO following their request for assistance in both Honduras and Nicaragua.
Ireland's assistance to Honduras and the solidarity of the Irish people with the stricken country has been acknowledged by the Honduran Minister for International Relations.
Trócaire's personnel in Honduras, both expatriate and local, have extensive experience of handling emergency relief programmes, most recently in conjunction with Irish Aid for emergency relief for El Nino drought victims. Trócaire has a network of local counterpart organisations in the affected areas which allows it to operate at short notice in emergency situations. Trócaire has identified 17 projects directly affected by the hurricane in nine municipalities in Honduras. Grants totalling £100,000 have been allocated to Trócaire's initial programmes aimed at providing emergency assistance. The main form of relief supplies will consist of family food packages.
According to recent reports from the World Health Organisation, one of the most immediate threats is one of disease as a result of severe damage to the health infrastructure and an acute shortage of medical supplies. The needs are great in view of injuries requiring emergency care, and high risks from epidemics of cholera, malaria and dengue fever in stricken areas. Respiratory illnesses, diarrhoea and conjunctivitis are reported by public health authorities in all the countries affected. A grant of £100,000 will go towards meeting these needs. It will be disbursed via the UN office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs and earmarked for the World Health Organisation Appeal for emergency medical supplies on behalf of all countries affected. Part of the moneys allocated to APSO will fund the supply of emergency medical kits in some of the most affected areas of Honduras.
In summary, the Government has approved grants totalling £100,000 to Trócaire for immediate relief effort, which include meeting the needs in nine severely affected municipalities in Honduras to assist approximately 30,000 people; grants totalling £80,000 to APSO for humanitarian assistance in Honduras and Nicaragua; a grant of £120,000 to the International Federation of the Red Cross — the federation, along with its national societies, is able to disburse these funds to where they are most needed including other countries such as Guatemala and El Salvador; and a grant of £100,000 to the World Health Organisation for emergency medical supplies on behalf of all countries affected within the region.
In allocating this bilateral emergency funding, I have taken into account the very clear needs in Central America. The current storm is one of a number of disasters which have happened across the world in recent months. Floods in Bangladesh, India and China have also affected millions of people. Ongoing emergencies in Sudan, Central Africa and Kosovo, to name just a few, require humanitarian assistance. Ireland has given generously to all these areas and will continue to be as responsive as we can, given our capacities.
The capacity to pay of the heavily indebted countries affected by the hurricane has, to put it mildly, become extremely limited, if not virtually non-existent. This requires an urgent international response including the possibility of a debt moratorium on immediate debt payments and addressing long-term debt needs. It is very encouraging to see that some countries are moving to cancel the debt owed to them by the worst affected countries, which are genuinely on a debt treadmill. Servicing external debt diverts scarce resources from vital areas like health and education, and supporting debt relief is now a key pillar in our aid strategy. We have already taken practical steps to support debt initiatives by allocating a total of £20 million towards debt relief through direct allocations to debt relief funds and for the first time through the World Bank and IMF programmes which are geared to ease the plight of the most highly indebted countries. It makes sense for us to do this. Quite simply, by spending less on debt repayment these countries can spend more on their own people and on social and human development. Nowhere is this more patently clear than in the Central American countries affected by Hurricane Mitch. These countries have to start again from zero. Their chances of rehabilitation will be severely hampered if they are burdened by unsustainable debt levels. With this in mind the General Affairs Council of the European Union held an initial discussion on this matter last Monday, and it will also be discussed by other Ministers with responsibility for development at the end of the month.
This was a natural disaster of massive and deadly proportions. It was also a disaster which had a savage and disproportionate impact on a region which was already struggling to cope with the every day needs of its people. This was a double cruelty. Richer countries can be prepared for storms and hurricanes. Buildings are more secure, technology permits minute by minute information, there are resources to permit large scale evacuation and people have insurance and jobs to return to. By contrast we have seen in Central America how poverty compounds the impact of disaster leaving a deadly legacy. They were not prepared, there was no warning and in the aftermath poor telecommunications, lack of basic equipment, poor housing and adequate medical services means that more will suffer and rebuilding will take longer.
For Nicaragua, the disaster comes at a particularly unfortunate time, after a period of drought which damaged agricultural production. Despite that drought, recent growth forecasts had been promising, but the effects of the hurricane and flooding on the livelihoods of farmers and on agricultural production are likely to be very severe with some reports suggesting that 80 per cent of the valuable coffee crop has been lost. There may also be a reversal of progress achieved under the second enhanced structural adjustment facility agreed with the IMF last March. A recent agreement between the government, doctors and other public health workers for badly needed salary increases of over 100 per cent could also be jeopardised if funds have to be diverted by the government in emergency relief and rehabilitation.
In Honduras the widespread destruction of factories, farmland and crops means that many of the survivors have lost their only source of income. One of the industries hardest hit has been the banana industry, which in some areas has been totally devastated and may take years to recover. The hurricane and subsequent water and mud slides have in some places not only destroyed the crop but also rendered the ground unusable for probably many years for banana production. Thousands have lost their jobs and their livelihoods. The international community must come to their aid. I applaud the decisions of some of the international companies doing business in the areas, like Fyffes, who have made donations towards relief and are committed to rehabilitating the land and the industry which has been affected.
Peace was also returning, with the most recent of several peace agreements being signed between rebels and the government in Guatemala. The Guatemalan peace accords, which were recently approved by the country's Congress, involve the achievement of socioeconomic targets and it remains to be seen to what extent the disaster may jeopardise these commitments.
Environmental degradation has aggravated the effects of such disasters. Widespread deforestation leading to silted riverbeds, construction in flood plains and on the flanks of mountains, the use of slash and burn techniques for clearing land — all of these combine to increase the scale of devastation when natural catastrophes occur. The devastation caused by mudslides in Honduras is ample evidence of this. Honduras and Nicaragua were poor countries and have now been set back by many years. Decades of work was eliminated in a period of 24 hours. The tireless and heroic efforts of our aid workers had to switch from building up employment and community programmes to emergency relief.
While we concentrate our immediate attention on emergency relief efforts it is clear that the international community must show long-term commitment and solidarity with the countries of Central America in their efforts to rebuild their economy and renew hope for their people. One community leader in Honduras was quoted as saying "we are not on our knees begging, we are asking for the dignity of your co-operation". We owe them that dignity.
Long after the television cameras have left the scenes of devastation we must maintain our presence and work in the region. We will need to focus on long-term rehabilitation assistance and I have given a commitment that the Irish Government will, together with the international community, stay with these countries and help increase their capacity to grow out of poverty.
The EU is already looking at ways to support urgent reconstruction. The Council regulation on assistance to developing countries in Asia and Latin America already provides for additional funding and technical assistance for reconstruction in the wake of disasters. Ireland will be pressing for full use of this facility. In addition, the disaster in Central America will be a principal item on the Development Council agenda when it meets at the end of this month. I will strongly support programmes for emergency aid and reconstruction to assist the devastated countries.
Although some people may wish the Government to respond even more generously to the needs of Central America, my ability to do so is limited by the resources available for official development assistance. It is true that ODA has increased every year since 1992 from a low base of £40 million to £137 million this year, a huge increase of 242.5 per cent. This is a growth rate which has reflected successive Governments' commitment to the developing world. There is strong democratic support for this. We are now a developed nation thanks to our own efforts and huge transfers from the EU.
Between the late 1970s and early 1990s, EU transfers to Ireland accounted for between 2 and 4 per cent of our GDP. No poor country has benefited from the generosity of others on such a scale. In the period from 1992 to 1997, the aid allocation as a percentage of GNP rose from 0.16 per cent to 0.31 per cent in line with the commitment to move towards the interim target of 0.45 per cent of GNP. However, the extraordinary growth in GNP has complicated matters and has in effect overtaken our aid commitment as a percentage of GNP.
For example, an extra allocation of £15 million was agreed for 1998 as part of the Estimates process at the end of 1997 aimed at the time of its allocation at reaching a target of 0.32 per cent of GNP. However, the rapid GNP growth in the year has meant the outturn is more likely to be around 0.29 per cent. To deal with this dilemma of growth as it impacts on ODA percentage GNP targets, we need to agree multi-annual budgets to avoid the annual round of adversarial Estimates discussions. This is a matter not just for the Government but for parties opposite who, in due course, will be on this side. In light of that, it is all the more important that we hold firm to the trend of the last few years of sustaining incremental increases so that at least, in real cash terms, the budget grows every year to maintain a credible aid programme.
Our aid budget is a measure of our commitment to civilised values. There is perhaps no greater practical indicator of our solidarity with the poor of the world and the vindication of human rights than our work in developing countries. The Estimates for 1999 have now been published. Because the overall increase is inadequate and because large mandatory payments are due in 1999 we are forced to cut back on country programmes, emergency and humanitarian assistance. Deputies know my views on this: I am appalled. The debt package, while welcome and legitimately an allocation under ODA, sits oddly with a cut in spending on basic needs and emergency assistance.
I hope in the context of a caring budget, the Government will address the concerns I expressed last week and again today in this regard. Times are good in Ireland and it is imperative that we share our bounty with those people whose poverty has no parallel here.
