I am delighted to note that there are more Canadian Members of Parliament listening to me on this occasion than Irish Members of Parliament. I join with the Ceann Comhairle in welcoming the delegation. I had the great honour of visiting Ottawa some years ago.
I welcome the agreement which has the support of my party. I also welcome the evolution of democracy in South Africa marked by the election of President Mandela's successor. Given the strength of support for the ruling party in South Africa in the recent elections, I hope any temp tation to replace white supremism with black supremism will not be given in to. The objective of our foreign policy should be to ensure pluralism in South Africa so that a true democracy can evolve. I wish to outline some of Fine Gael's policies on Third World debt and development which relate to some of the issues raised by the Minister of State and into which we put considerable work. Ireland could do much more in this area given our new-found status and wealth.
There are 1,300 million people living in abject poverty at a time of plenty. Having recently commemorated the 150th anniversary of the devastating great Famine, Ireland must ensure that it meets its full international obligations in tackling such abject poverty. We have no right to pressurise other wealthy states to meet their contributions if we are not meeting ours. For this reason alone we must meet the commitment given to the UN so that the 0.7 per cent GNP target will be met at last.
Development policy should be based on values, in this case the values of the Irish people and international values based on principles of justice and equality. It should also take seriously our responsibilities under international law; it should play to national strengths, competencies and historical links to the developing world; it should give priority to the poorest of the poor, to women, children and youth; and it should include a clear rationale for the relative emphasis on different aid priorities, bilateral or multilateral, the countries involved and the reasons.
Development policy should be coherent across Departments if it is to be based on national values. These values should be apparent, not only in Irish aid policy but in the relationship between this policy and other policies which affect the developing world, such as trade, justice, education, agriculture, defence and finance. It should inform our approach to all aspects of EU policy development. There should be critical public ownership of our development policy through awareness and education programmes.
Much progress has been made in the area of development aid. The average life expectancy in the Third World increased by over one third between 1960 and 1999 to 65 years, 85 per cent of that in the industrialised world. Due to the end of the Cold War and the reduction of superpower rivalry in the developing world, an estimated 380,000 refugees were able to return home in 1990 alone. Throughout the developing world adult literacy rates increased from 46 per cent to 60 per cent between 1970 and 1985. However, much remains to be done.
Some 14 million young children and ten million older children and young adults die each year from easily and cheaply preventable diseases. Each day, 34,000 children die from easily preventable malnutrition and disease. War and internal conflicts affect over 60 countries and one in every 115 people on earth is a refugee or migrant, with more than six million refugees in sub-Saharan Africa.
More than one billion adults cannot read or write, a fact which affects many aspects of their daily lives, including their health, wealth and their families' well-being. Numerically the largest number of severely impoverished people live in south Asia which is home to about 30 per cent of the world's population. Africa has about 16 per cent of the world's population and half of all Africans are impoverished. Women suffer disproportionately, representing 70 per cent of all poverty stricken people, followed closely by the elderly.
Although urban poverty continues to grow, the rural poor still represent more than 80 per cent of the world's poor. The extent of poverty varies greatly between regions within countries. Kadar Asmal recently stated that, although progress has been made on basic facilities such as water supply and electricity, much remains to be done in South Africa. As part of the continent of Africa, it is important that Irish technical assistance should be targeted at South Africa.
About 17 million people in developing countries die each year from infectious and parasitic diseases such as malaria, diarrhoea and tuberculosis. More than 90 per cent of the 17 million HIV-infected people live in developing countries. Nearly 800 million people do not get enough food and about 500 million people are chronically malnourished. Maternal mortality in the Third World is 350 per 100,000 live births, about nine times higher than in OECD countries. These people are our neighbours and their needs are our concerns.
Ireland's per capita income is now between 90 per cent and 100 per cent of the EU average and, given the extent of our economic growth, we will exceed that average in a relatively short period of time. No matter how one chooses to view the situation, Ireland has greatly increased its status in the list of wealthy countries. Does the Minister of State agree that we are meeting our full responsibility to our suffering neighbours? I do not believe we are doing so, and all Governments have been guilty of this offence.
The recently announced multi-annual financing of the discretionary elements of the overseas development aid budget is welcome but is wholly inadequate. In years to come the Estimate procedure will continue to go through the annual wrangle with the Department of Finance, and the actual money contributed, as opposed to the percentage of national wealth or GNP, will form part of that argument. Those who benefit from overseas development aid do not elect Members of either House. Therefore, the pressure will always be to allocate scarce funding to domestic projects in response to electoral demands. It is time to take this area of funding outside the annual Estimates procedure and to legislate so as to meet the UN commitment of 0.7 per cent of GNP by 2007. I have put forward specific proposals for greater accountability involving the Committee on For eign Affairs so as not to weaken democratic control of that expenditure process, given that the annual Estimates figure will have been agreed in advance. I will not go into those proposals during this debate but I have clearly set them out in other documents.
Ireland is a shining example of the principle that development aid works. Notwithstanding the millions of people living in abject poverty, more people have escaped from poverty in the past 50 years than in the previous 500 years. Ireland has solidly contributed to this achievement but much remains to be done. The debt crisis is draining developing countries of desperately needed resources. The cost of servicing debt has reversed human development gains made since the 1950s. The total debt owed to various creditors, such as individual countries, multilateral bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank and commercial banks, has passed $2 trillion, more than treble the level in 1980. Debt repayments in 1996 amounted to $244 billion, over four times the amount of official aid received by developing countries.
We can do something about this. I do not believe that we can forgive all debt in all countries. We must be careful about the people to whom we give money. We should put a line in our Estimates procedure to provide for NGOs and overseas missionaries, who would give a far better response to the funds they are given than some of the tinpot dictators who have ruled countries to which we have given money in the past.
Through the European Union, we could start the procedure. The European Union could set up a debt commission to review and make recommendations about those countries whose debt should be forgiven or mitigated. If we did that on a regional basis, we would force the hand of the international community to take similar steps. We simply cannot expect States to continue to bear the burden of debt we have imposed on them.
Put another way, where would Ireland be today if the £25 billion or so we received in transfers from the European Union since 1973 was in the form of loans rather than grants? We would not be anywhere near the stage we are at now. If we had such a millstone around our necks and had to service such a debt, we would have encountered major problems down the years. Yet we expect people, who do not have anything akin to the market to which we have access in the European Union, to meet debt repayments we have imposed on them, which are many times more than that figure. Those people have very few tools with which to meet those repayments. This is an unacceptable practice and it has reached a level where such a requirement is a human rights violation. We are asking people to repay money to international agencies and banks which should be spent on keeping the children to whom I referred alive.
I will put forward two suggestions on the twinning of central Government and local government, which I made in the policy document I put forward. As an additional contribution to over seas development aid each of the 15 Departments should be asked to identify a separate developing country or region and to specialise in providing advice and or services of assistance to that country or region. For example, the Department of Health and Children could develop a particular relationship with Ethiopia, the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs with Uganda and the Department of the Environment and Local Government with Lesotho.
The Minister of State with responsibility for housing is present. This is a golden opportunity for us to give advice, particularly to South Africa. The Minister's Department could probably give expert advice on how many of the environmental, water and housing problems in South Africa could be tackled. Such advice could be targeted at regions in the way I suggested.
The expertise, experience and advice of each Department should be available to each of these states or regions with which that Department is twinned on an organised basis to be set out in a protocol or agreement between both states following consultation with NGOs here. Similarly, each local authority should twin with a region within a developing state with a view to providing expertise in such areas as water quality, sewage treatment, housing, engineering, horticulture, agriculture and environmental protection following consultation with NGOs here.
I welcome this agreement and agreements of this kind. South Africa is fortunate to be developing and evolving as a democracy. It is probably more fortunate than other parts of Africa. The principles I espoused apply to South Africa, other parts of Africa and other regions of the world, particularly Asia. Given the wealth that Ireland has accumulated, it is time we took more seriously our international responsibilities to these people. The promotion of justice will bring with it greater peace and stability and we have a vested interest in ensuring we have a world where that exists.
