Seanad Éireann debate -
Thursday, 24 Jun 1976

Vol. 84 No. 6

UNCTAD Meeting: Motion.

Mr. M.D. Higgins

I move:

That Seanad Éireann notes the proceedings of the Fourth meeting of UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) at Nairobi and the position taken by the Irish Delegation in particular.

I am reluctant to waste the time of the House but I must once again thank you for contributing to my education on procedure of the House.

It gives me very great pleasure that this Motion has been taken. Since I became a Member of Seanad Éireann, this is the first occasion upon which we have discussed a Motion that consciously brings into discussion and debate the attitude of this country towards what has been referred to as the Third World. The Motion invites the Seanad to discuss the proceedings of the Fourth meeting of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and particularly to note the position taken by Ireland. The Fourth conference of UNCTAD highlighted at least three dimensions of the relationships between industrialised and non-industrialised countries. These three are: the future structure of trade; the structure of indebtedness between Third World countries and industrialised nations; the relationships between technology producing and technology importing countries.

It is not very often that I make reference to a journalist in the Seanad but I would like to pay tribute to John Armstrong for his excellent coverage of this fourth conference. From Armstrong's report, among others, one could see that there was a difference between three perspectives which were offered: a perspective derived from the rhetoric of the European Community in its heyday that one must love and do something for the Third World; then the position of the member states individually, particularly the larger industrial nations, and finally the cleavage that came about between the positions of the major undeveloped and the industrial countries.

Finally the Motion asks the Seanad to discuss the position taken by Ireland. It appears to me Ireland could have identified itself with the position of any one of these groups. It could have selected any one of these teams. It could have decided that it could move into the centre of international discussions a major problem of the Third World. It could have decided to associate itself with its new economic alliances or it could have decided, for example, that it had some common process with the Third World nations. All of these issues should be discussed in the Houses of the Oireachtas and I am extremely grateful to the Minister for Foreign Affairs for coming into the House and agreeing to take this Motion this morning.

I want to introduce some of the debate which I hope will be sparked off. I have said that the fourth conference had a significance which the other conferences had not. I want to give some point to that. I have spent a great deal of my life as an academic, as has the Minister for Foreign Affairs, dealing with matters of sociology and economic planning. I have seen in those years a tremendous denigration among academic comment of the people who are referred to as belonging to the Third World. Professional economists, to mention a few, draw their images from various sources such as Rostow, suggesting that countries inevitably had to go through the stages of economic growth, describing economic development in terms such as "one put one's car into gear and took off into sustained growth"—I quote from his book. Later economists speak about "the intractable difficulties of the undeveloped world to accommodate to the conditions for achieving economic growth." In turn, much later, as an inexorable economic growth began to explode off, people discovered poverty domestically. The United States 1964 programme followed the usual evolutionary pattern: "discover poverty, propose solutions, let them fail, then have an academic suggestion that the poor are intractable to relief and suddenly your conscience is absolved." Then this notion is diffused among other industrialising nations. Domestically, internationally, the Third World countries suddenly achieve a political power and a tremendous political consciousness that they do not have to belong to this old world of ideas and suddenly all the old lies, which they were, of the academic world come tumbling down around the heads of the professional sociologists, the professional economists.

What then was UNCTAD 4 about when it met in Nairobi? It was about this awareness which had taken place. In academic reflection on the problems of development people had spoken about the need to assist the Third World to develop, but may I make the point to a Minister who is guilty as much as I as a practitioner for a while in the bourgeois kind of comment on economics, that all the things which were suggested as aids to development had been written brilliantly about by native economists in Africa. In his fine book published last year A. Onyemalkwe, a Nigerian economist of distinction, was able to express everything that was in the Rostow thesis rather than as being an aid to development as being a conscious obstacle to development. In fact, in 1976 we live at a time in the world when the verb "undevelop" has a very real meaning. We say that the movements, the structures, the analyses, the pretences that have been made by the industrial nations have been systematic, covert attempts to undevelop the Third World, the dependent nations.

I have got no comfort from introducing this motion here. In another sense I might say—I hope it sparks off a response—that this country, which experienced famine because of a population expansion which was not matched by an expansion in food resources, is every day more and more matching itself to the rhetoric of industrial nations who have no cognisance or apparently no awareness of what is happening in the larger world. People can say lots of thing and will congratulate themselves, but may I make the point that we, the people who experienced famine, are by our industrial attitudes and by our consumption attitudes now participants in famine in other parts of the world.

As one of the people who all around this country opposed the present Minister for Foreign Affairs on the issue of Ireland's entry to the European Community—whatever those two words might mean these days—might I say this?—I have always been an internationalist and I believe that every action taken in this island should be examined not only for its consequenecs for this and future generations in this island but in its world context and implications. We had at this conference a number of choices facing us. We could have indulged in empty rhetoric, imagining that we had something in common with West Germany, France or countries like that. We could have imagined that we had influenced the Commission to such a significant degree that the Commission was now speaking compassionately of the mouths that need to be fed in the Third World.

Or, we could have had done something else. We might have remembered our own experience and our own near history, unattractive to a number of people, always unattractive to pragmatists interested in the short notion of things. We might have decided that we had an individual contribution to make to the Third World, but we did not ignore the conference. The Minister for Industry and Commerce visited the conference and gave a speech at it which is regarded as being of major significance and I propose to comment on it.

I want to set straight in this House that the present incumbent of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dr. FitzGerald, is frequently attacked as a person who juggles statistics in his own interest or something rather like that. I have never made such an allegation against the Minister. That statement is regularly made by people who find facts uncomfortable and analysis difficult. Might I invite him to go beyond statistics and analyses when he replies to this point which I make now? Industrial countries when they are assessed in terms of their aid to the Third World cannot be assessed either in terms of their net contribution or the proportion of gross national product. It is a meaningless statistic. It has a meaning amongst the fraternity of giving countries who are also exploiters but in the overall sense of development it is a meaningless statistic. I now offer some evidence of this.

It is calculated that 1 per cent of the industrial countries own 70 per cent of the industrial patents of the world, that a billion dollars per year is paid by the underdeveloped countries to the developed countries for patents. Quite accurately, the pretentious statements of the industrialised countries should be expressed as a fraction of that kind of payment. It is meaningless to offer figures about aid to the Third World unless you are accompanying it by your own trade statistics, by suggesting the amount of participation you are willing to allow these people in international trade on equal terms.

I mentioned something which bored the House previously. It is quite meaningless to speak of gross figure for aid unless you are willing to discuss the kind of scientific and technological aid which you are willing to offer. As I look around here in the House this morning I suppose one should be flattered by the presence of ten Senators when we are discussing a motion that affects the Third World. I am suggesting that the absence of so many encourages me to, if necessary, bore people by my more esoteric predilections for arguments about the structure of technology.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce, probably one of the best trained Ministers who has ever occupied a Cabinet position in relation to science, knows about technology and knows about science. At present there is an argument going on in the world as to whether we should give aid to the Third World countries to allow them to develop indigenous technology which may challenge some of the western notions of technology. These points were made by the Nigerian commentators on this conference.

There is also the notion that somehow or other the alternative notion to indigenous technology is that science has a universal spin-off which can be exported readily to other countries. The general notion presented among the simplistic teachers of history in our schools was that England had an industrial revolution, that France had one at a different period and then Ireland had it. It was rather like modern explanations of inflation. It was as if a flu analogy was appropriate. It spread. Whereas before, old principles of political domination represented by military presence sustained by domestic revenue could be financed in the Third World and colonies, in exactly the same way today the refusal of education authorities to give away to these countries the right to develop in science techniques appropriate to their cultures and to their countries, is an imperialism of a new kind. When aid is given, which I have already questioned, it is frequently given in a form which is already dated. Those Third World countries can have techniques that will become dated within five or ten years but what they want is the opportunity to invest in the intelligence of their people, and an investment in the intelligence of their people may revert the relationship between the dependent country and the provider country.

At the very beginning of my remarks I said that there were options open to Ireland, that it could have taken a stand on any one of these themes, on all of these themes or on how these themes were being treated by different participants at the conference. May I make a confession here? I am aware that one of the major points that will undoubtedly be made by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, whose function so often is a correction in the matter of facts to me, is that I have made no reference to that theme of debt repayment which occupied so much of the conference. But might I say to you a Leas-Chathaoirleach, that I say this to the Minister: it has taken me so long in this House to force a debate on the Third World that I want to address myself to the more general issues with a view to being very specific in the matter of international financing, if necessary, later.

Could I invite us to say something else, raise a question in this House, a rather speculative question which disturbs me as a professional intellectual involved in analysing the meaning of the word development? Are we not a Third World country? Is Ireland not a third world country? At the conference I think it was the representative of Tanzania at one stage said that international platforms were being used as places for making political statements rather than places for taking action on problems. When we go abroad with which tongue do we speak? We sit to dinner with Ministers from Holland, France, Germany and the United States and we also meet and sit at meals with people from Asia and Africa. We are, interestingly, a technology-importing country as well but where does our identity lie? Are we not with those who are poor, not poor by choice, living on an island capable of producing enough food to sustain the population but strangled by the economic relationships that we have put ourselves into to produce for the market?

I look around this House and I look at the few who are here, who are people who told us about the wonders of sharing in the community in Europe. I say to those people where are they sharing in the community of the world? What about the consequences of the domestic actions of these tremendous Europeans? What about the fact that European commitment has meant the movement of Irish agriculture towards agri-business which—and I follow this argument tightly because it is complicated—has meant the more concentrated use of fertilisers and in turn has diverted fertilisers away from their necessary use where population pressure is greatest in the world; which has diverted capital away from irrigation schemes where population pressure has demanded that they be implemented in the world? The word "community" bandied around by all these people who somehow or another attach themselves to it does not involve the concept of the world. Did we at that conference speak about the scandalous wastage of resources of fertilisers, of capital on irrigation schemes, the diversion of training schemes from where they were needed, where mouths were to be fed in the world to where people were being pushed into agri-business? Did we as a community advert to the fact that every action of greed has its consequences in famine in the Third World? Or is all of this irrelevant and abstract and somehow or another bothering the House early in the morning?

I began with the question, where do we locate ourselves? The distinguished Minister for Foreign Affairs must frequently ask himself is he complimented all over the Community as its most distinguished President? Is he a Community man when it comes to the Third World? Does he think somehow or another by association we have acquired the profile of the industrialised nations or maybe there is merit in reading history, that the 19th century existed with its relationship of food resources to population, that the 1980s and 1990s will have their threatening population pressure on resources. All over the world it has been seen that the principle—I asked him to discuss this concept of domination, imperialism if you wish—is now being discussed in a non-militaristic way, in a non-monetary way, in a way which realises that one can through the manipulation of minds and through the structure of knowledge enslave a people. We may be partners in the enslavement of a people by refusing to allow indigenous science and technology to develop in Third World countries.

I ask the Minister, as a concession to someone who has offered perhaps the argument a little too passionately, to refrain in his reply from balancing the position, for example, offered by the group of 77, the Dutch position and the different other positions. I am tired of that kind of trivialisation. That is description, it is not history and if it be history it is history of the worst kind. It is history of the unquestioning participation in famine and in poverty by a nation that has experienced both. I am not interested that we managed to buy the air tickets, that we took a plane, landed in Africa, that somebody spoke, that papers were presented and that some of them were more attractive than others. I am not insulting the Minister —I know that other speakers might be lured into such a trap in this House. I am far more interested in the question with which I began my thesis.

There is a new argument going on in the world upon which we have to make up our mind and take sides. Are we going to abandon the word "develop" altogether and take cognisance of the implications of the development of the verb, "undevelop", as it has been by brilliant economists in the Third World? Are we going to agree with the present system of the diffusion of technology without considering its implications? Are we going to accept the notion that crude transfers of payments are sufficient as something to help the Third World? Are we going to do something that is, perhaps, very unusual, are we going to buy no air ticket at all, stay very still, and journey into our own experience and see what has happened us as a people, the tremendous tragedy that happened when we made food expensive for our people, when people had to die on this island because of an insufficiency of food? Are we going to say to the people of Africa and Asia, "We have a very great deal in common"?

I was glad the Minister for Industry and Commerce went to the conference but it is necessary that we realise it is necessary that we become re-educated now by visiting these countries. Ourselves, involved in the waste-making society, in making people adjuncts of an economic system, establishing a film industry and an artistic system and an anaesthetic theory on the premises of greed could unlearn all of those theories in the countries of Africa and Asia, we might go to those countries so that they might help us rid ourselves of this crippling mentality which we have had here. Unfortunately, what was delivered by the Minister for Industry and Commerce was less than I expected. It was what might be regarded as a diplomatic speech but not a speech of concern. I thank the House for having listened to me with such patience.

Mr. Horgan

I should like to second the motion. In Nairobi Ireland took a hesitant but, in my view, a genuine stand towards aligning herself with the small but important group of relatively wealthy countries who are prepared to accept, in varying degress, the Third World's own analysis of its own problems and, perhaps, some solutions advanced by the Third World countries to meet these problems. The purpose of this motion is to hammer home that commitment, to stamp the endorsement of this House on the action taken by the Irish Government at that conference as far as it went and to steel the Government's resolve towards the difficult and, perhaps, politically dangerous steps they will have to take in the future if they are to implement their stand at that conference.

Things were not always thus. If I may refresh the House's memory for a moment I should like to quote a rather interesting debate on the External Affairs Estimate in May, 1925, to show how far we have come since then. Mr. Conor Hogan, speaking on the Estimate, at column 1449, Volume 11 said:

... what makes up the greatness of England more than that very thing, her success in colonisation? Will they deny that? Within reasonable limits what has been made such a great success by the British can also be made a success by us. I believe if it were possible to get a slice of Africa, such a thing is perfectly feasible. In fact, it could be due to us under the terms of the Imperial connection. Did not the South African Commonwealth take over German West Africa? If we could get some part, say some part of the States taken from Germany during the great war, such, for instance, as East Africa, I believe it would be one of the most advantageous things possible for the Irish Free State. I am perfectly serious in this matter. You have there a virgin soil. Unfortunately, when people have to emigrate from this country, they usually go abroad to other countries that are not under our flag. Suppose we had a colony such as I suggest, and if we could induce the people who are determined to emigrate to go to that colony, can you realise what it would mean? They would still remain subjects and they would still retain the home ties. They would live under our flag and they would do a considerable lot towards increasing our export trade. That colony would be a natural means of securing a good export trade for this country, because the colonists would naturally turn to the home land for Irish products to meet their requirements.

A lot has happened in 50 years. I do not know the extent to which Deputy Hogan at that time was speaking for the vast majority of the Irish people but, certainly, it is a point of view which found legitimate expression at that time.

Of course, one of the things that has happened in that 50 years is a growing consciousness on the part of the former colonies of their particular role and position in the spectrum of world development, world politics, and the world economic situation.

The motion specifically refers to the UNCTAD Conference. I should like to remind the House of the events that led up to that conference because they are relevant. Beforehand we were witnessing a kind of sharp deterioration in the trade and economic situation of the developing countries. The oil crisis had tended in addition to hit them rather harder than it had hit developing countries this side of the Equator. They were getting very anxious about the situation and hence the conference was determined to discuss some of the key problems which that raised. I am glad to say that before the conference there was a certain amount of public pressure in Ireland urging our Government to take a particular stance. One of the things we have witnessed over the last few years has been the growth not just of the division between the poor countries and the rich countries but a division within the relatively rich countries themselves. On one side of this division there are the large producing nations who are basically in favour of as free as possible a system of trade. On the other hand there are another group of countries, fairly numerous but perhaps not as politically powerful, who have a more conscious approach to their international responsibilities.

In a publication, One World, published jointly by Trocaire and the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace before the problem started, the Irish Government were urged strongly to support the stand then being taken by the Netherlands and the Norwegian Governments at the conference. In a very well argued editorial on the front page the point was made in some detail. I do not propose to quote from it except to say that the work of these two organisations must be saluted in this House. As politicians are always suspicious of pressure groups, all I can say about this collection of pressure groups is that I wish there were more like them.

Dr. FitzGerald

Hear, hear.

Mr. Horgan

At the conference the group of 77, the group of developing countries, maintained a remarkable and very constructive degree of cohesion and harmony in their approach to the problems. They asked, indeed demanded, a new international economic order in which their rights to freedom from exploitation will be respected and written into international agreements. All the words in this are important. It must be new, it must be international, it must be economic, it must have order. It must not be a free-for-all which some countries so plainly desire.

During the conference this division between one group of relatively wealthy countries and another group of relatively wealthy countries surfaced in rather stark terms. They do not appear stark when one reads the official communiques because anyone who has been to international conferences knows well how much blood, sweat and tears can be hidden behind the most vacuous wording. However, it did surface. Almost at the eleventh hour there was an extraordinary statement, never actually as far as I know read into the record but still circulated, by the United States, the United Kingdom, West Germany and Japan, relating to the crucial issue of the commodity agreement. That statement was plainly an attempt to torpedo the whole work of the conference in this very fundamental area by regarding the work of the conference as being basically inconclusive. In the statement the key phrase these wealthy countries suggested was that "preparatory meetings will be convened on individual products and that the preparatory meetings are consultations prior to a decision whether to enter negotiations". If UNCTAD was about anything it was about actual negotiations, actual decisions. It was not about deciding to talk about whether they would meet and talk again. This statement evoked another statement which was read into the record at the plenary session by the Minister for Development Co-operation of the Netherlands on 30th May, 1976. This very firmly stitched it into the record on behalf of 16 countries, of whom Ireland was one, that although the process of improving and leading to a new and equitable structure and economic relationship between developing and developed countries would be difficult and would require political will and determination, it stressed the commitment, the total commitment of these 16 countries to the consensus which was so painfully hammered out in Nairobi.

I am glad Ireland has aligned herself with this group of 16 countries and I hope one of the effects of this debate will be to reinforce her commitment to the sort of ideas expressed by these countries during the UNCTAD Conference. We may read into what happened in Nairobi, a very serious political defeat for the United States of America. One of the reasons we may do this is because it became clear at the conference, and immediately afterwards, that the United States having suffered this political defeat was not going to take it lying down, was going to continue to do its level best to torpedo the consensus arrived at there.

To this end it is now convening another conference to which it has invited a number of major countries and to which the EEC will be sending observers. I should like to impress on the Minister here—we would like a commitment from him—that there should be absolutely no wavering on Ireland's stand. We will have to play the maximum possible role within the EEC to ensure that those EEC countries, notably the United Kingdom and Germany which are in favour of the American line on this problem, must not be allowed to skew the EEC into a new policy which would be a total reverse of the spirit and probably also of the letter of Nairobi.

I understand their substantial political difference on this, not least because one of our major opponents on this in the EEC would be West Germany, on whose good will any country stands to benefit from the Common Agricultural Policy and needs, to a certain extent, to depend. This should not slow us down; it should not cause us to hesitate. We have began to make ourselves clear in Nairobi and we must carry this through almost whatever the cost. Certainly, we must make it absolutely clear where we stand. It can be argued that on this critical question of commodities the decision of the UNCTAD Conference that in principle there should be a commodities fund which would stabilise the price of commodities and, therefore, protect the position of the weaker countries is one which stands to benefit us. We have one of the most open economies in Europe, we do a huge amount of trading proportionate to our GNP and, therefore, it suits us to contribute appropriately to the fund which I hope will be set up to make this commodities policy a reality. This is one of the very few areas, perhaps, in which politics, expediency and morality all coincide.

I should like to ask the Minister specifically whether a decision has been taken to change downwards the total percentage of our GNP which it is intended to devote to development aid over the next few years. The early proposal, as far as I am aware, was for a rise to 0.035 per cent of our GNP. If, as has been suggested, this has now been revised downwards, perhaps, to 0.025 per cent, the financial consequences for our development aid programme will be enormous. By 1979 the gap between the two figures might be more than we are spending in our total for development aid. What we are being asked to contribute to in this commodities fund, one of the key aspects of UNCTAD, is about £5 million by way of grant and loan combined; £2½ million at first and £2½ million on call. I urge the Government to make that commitment in the light of the policy so often enunciated by the present Minister and to make sure that that commitment is met when it is called for.

I should like to make a few comments on our patterns of aid. It is often said that our aid to developing countries is small. It is also true that although we export comparatively little to developing countries by way of capital and technology we export a great deal in terms of personnel. The Irish missionary efforts have often been referred to in this connection. A lot of this export of people to developing countries followed many of the patterns of aid to developing countries from countries richer than ourselves. In other words, we tended to export things that were not necessarily of any great use to ourselves and, perhaps, also on some occasions, not necessarily of any great use to the countries that received them.

It is extraordinary, for example, that as an agricultural country which exports people as part of its contribution to development, we have exported very few agriculturists. It is true that we have contributed a lot of people but it is also true that the cost of contributing these people has been very low. It is also true that, in many cases, for the best motives, we have tended to co-operate in the creation of institutions and structures in these countries which are so large and so expensive that they tend to harden and copper fasten the dependancy relationship between them and the developed world about which they now so vociferously and correctly complain.

I would like to think we would have a creative look at our pattern of development aid. We may be able to make an argument in favour of spending some of our development aid on industrial restructuring here to ensure the industrial structures in developing countries would be able to benefit to the maximum possible extent from the markets we may offer them. It is possible we may help by restructuring our educational system. At the 20th Conference of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Rome, on behalf of the entire Irish delegation, led by Mr. Liam Cosgrave, I successfully moved an amendment to the main resolution before the assembly to urge that developed countries should change their educational systems. One of the main reasons they should change their educational systems would be to make more effective the type of aid they make available to developing countries in terms of personnel.

Finally, I should like to quote from the speech by the Secretary General of UNCTAD, Mr. Gamini Corea, when he opened the Conference:

If the political opportunity of Nairobi is not grasped then we will inevitably have a world of increasing tension, confrontation and turmoil.

It is less than totally certain that that political opportunity was grasped in Nairobi, nor was it totally evaded. It is not only an opportunity that needed to be grasped in Nairobi, it is an opportunity that needs to be grasped in Ireland.

Mrs. Robinson

I welcome the opportunity brought about by the tabling of the motion by my two Labour colleagues to have a discussion in this House on the Fourth Conference of UNCTAD in Nairobi. I also welcome the presence of the Minister for Foreign Affairs here. It may be that we will come to a stage where there will be no point in tabling a motion in the Seanad on anything but a matter dealing with Foreign Affairs because that may be discussed in a reasonable time. The motion raises a very serious issue. It is important at this point that the views of Senators be taken on the present state of the world international order and on the crucial problems which face the developing countries, and in particular the developing countries without resources most hit by the oil crisis and the recession in world trade. At the same time, a conference the size of UNCTAD which took place from 5th to 31st May in Nairobi with 139 of UNCTAD's 154 member States attending, as well as representatives of inter-governmental organisations and non-governmental organisations and UN agencies, could not be expected to take decisions in detail. That would be to misconstrue the purpose and the significance of UNCTAD. UNCTAD is an important forum for identification of problems and for expression of differing views. This should result in significant decisions in principle which would lead to a better and fairer international order. It is in this context that one must assess the progress made, or the lack of progress made, at UNCTAD 4. And in this context, as fat as decisions in principle went, it appears that UNCTAD 4 was disappointing and indeed very nearly disastrous.

The Commissioner for Development Aid of the EEC, Commissioner Cheysson, who has been very hardworking at his job and concerned about development aid to the Third World, spoke at a press conference in Brussels on returning from Nairobi on 3rd June and expressed disappointment at the decisions taken at UNCTAD. He pointed out that no headway was made on the problem of the enormous debt of the Third World which has been aggravated by the oil crisis. He said that the conclusions in this area at Nairobi were "insignificant." However, he said that in the field of raw materials and commodities agreements some progress had been made which was fundamental in nature and he hoped that the timetable agreed upon would compel the countries to meet their commitments in this area.

Consequently, taking into account the sort of forum it was, and the agreements in principle that should have been taken there, UNCTAD 4 was disappointing and almost disastrous. It is clear that it was only last minute burning of midnight oil that saved UNCTAD from complete failure. In reporting, at the end of the conference, for The Irish Times on 31st May, John Armstrong headlined his contribution: “Last-Minute Diplomatic Move Saves UNCTAD.” He went on:

A last-minute diplomatic move by 16 industrialised countries, including Ireland, aided by a shift in policy by West Germany, saved the fourth United Nations' Conference on Trade and Development from almost certain failure at its closing session here last night.

The move came in the wake of a shock decision earlier yesterday by the United States, Japan, West Germany and Britain to backtrack on a compromise proposal on the key issue of commodities which the four countries planned to read into the record of the conference at the final session.

The compromise was made and disaster was averted. I join very seriously with Senator Horgan in urging the Minister to hold firm to the compromise reached and not allow West Germany, in particular, or the other developed countries, such as the United States and Britain, to backtrack or sidetrack on the agreement reached. It is extremely important that at least the compromise on commodities agreements be held to.

I ask the Minister to comment on the unity of the European Community when faced with the critical problems of the developing countries, faced with the initiatives and the proposals of the Commission in the person of Commissioner Cheysson in this area. It is a very sad reflection on the present political development of the European Community that it was European Community countries, Germany and Britain, which were in danger of torpedoing the commodities agreement at the last minute in Nairobi. It was only late night burning the midnight oil which allowed a compromise to be reached.

What are the particular problems which were being considered at UNCTAD and on which agreement in principle was being sought? The basic problems have been well identified in a press release from the UNCTAD secretariat, dated 1st June, where the position was set out as follows:

Basic Problems

The Conference took place in a situation of growing income inequality in which developing countries have been faced with worsening economic problems. The extensive documentation prepared by the UNCTAD secretariat for the Conference described the plight of Third World nations:

While per capita income in developed market economy countries rose from an average $2,000 to about $4,000 in the 20 years ending in 1972, per capita income of developing countries went up only $125 to $300. While developed market-economy countries with 20 per cent of world population enjoy about two-thirds of total world income, the poorest countries with 30 per cent of world population have only 3 per cent of the world income. Underlying problems of hunger and malnutrition—even famine—and unemployment are even more pressing today than ever before.

The UNCTAD reports revealed that the real value of official development assistance from the developed market-economy countries—in terms of purchasing power—declined by about 3 per cent over the past decade. One result of the inadequate assistance was to force many developing countries to borrow more at steeper rates, leading to a sharp increase in their external indebtedness—from $9 billion at the end of 1956 to $119 billion (for the non-oil-exporting developing countries) at the end of 1973. With the cost of their imports rising faster than the revenue from their exports, their overall payments deficit jumped from $12 billion in 1973 to $45 billion in 1975.

Since the developing countries depend mainly on their exports of primary commodities—minerals and agricultural products—a substantial increase in volume and prices in international commodity trade would be of major importance to their entire development efforts. But growth in world commodity trade (excluding petroleum) has lagged in relation to the increase in world trade as a whole over the past two decades—due to slow increase in demand as well as protectionist policies of developed countries and restrictive marketing arrangements.

The Third World countries continue to be troubled by widely fluctuating prices for their commodities. In order to end their chronic dependence on commodity exports and manufactured imports, they want to build up their own processing and manufacturing industries. The target for their industrial growth was set by the 1975 conference of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO)—namely, to increase their share of world industrial production from the current 7 per cent to 25 per cent by the year 2000. This effort, in turn, will depend to a considerable degree on the willingness of advanced countries to open their markets to manufactured goods from the developing countries, and to provide less costly access to technology.

That is the background, the stark reality of the net decline in aid from developed countries to the developing countries, the increasing imbalance in their balance of payments suffered by the developing countries, the way in which these problems translate in human terms into famine, high unemployment and chronic problems for these countries. In response to this, the decisions taken in principle at UNCTAD were, by any realistic standards, disappointing. However, they included the adoption of the resolution on an integrated programme for commodities which has already been referred to, and this is an extremely important decision in principle. As part of this integrated programe, the conference agreed that steps will be taken towards the negotiation of a common fund. Ireland must commit itself very firmly to supporting and contributing to this common fund which will be used, among other things, for the financing of buffer stocks.

As well as that, a detailed timetable was set up for negotiations on this common fund and on individual products from September, 1976, to the end of 1978. It is proposed that an UNCTAD Conference for negotiations on the common fund will be held not later than next March. Once again, it is important that these timetables be held to, and that the excuse of establishing detailed technical committees which are not able to report in time will not be used to delay the timetable as arranged.

There was considerable disappointment in relation to the question of transfer of technology. It was proposed in the resolution to set up an expert group to draft a code of conduct on transfer of technology for adoption at the conference in 1977. But this fell far below the hopes and aspirations of the group of 77. Indeed, this was referred to by John Armstrong in his report on UNCTAD. He says:

The text on the transfer of technology represented a defeat for the developing countries which had demanded a decision now that the code would have legally binding provisions. An intergovernmental group is to be set up and it will formulate proposals.

In this extremely important area there was very considerable disappointment in the results achieved.

Apart from the actual resolution and the areas where there was some commitment, UNCTAD reinforced one important political reality, and that is the reality of the solidarity of the so-called group of 77. That is very significant in political terms for the evolution of a fair and more balanced economic order. The interests of the developing countries were quite different in different areas. Nevertheless, they held together. We are seeing a new phase in international relations with the development of OPEC and the group of 77, in a quite different context, holding together as a group. It is only in the face of this sort of solidarity that there will be a real transfer of power, a transfer of technology, and a more equitable distribution of resources to developing countries.

There is some danger that UNCTAD, being a forum dominated by the developing countries, will become a caucus for developing countries which is balanced by the OECD as a caucus for developed countries, in which they discuss the problems of how to redress an overall imbalance, matters such as generalised preferences, and aid levels, in a forum where they are dominant but without the power to secure implementation of the decisions. Indeed, reading the reports on the UNCTAD meeting and noting the eloquence and viewpoints expressed, I felt there was some analogy with a women's meeting in Ireland; where there is enormous eloquence, where the demands are clearly stated, where there is great enthusiasm for securing better rights, better equality, better distribution of power and better equality of opportunity and so on and yet for all the talk it is acknowledged that that is not the forum which will be able to achieve any of the objectives so eloquently argued. To some extent, I think UNCTAD a little along these lines.

What of the Irish contribution to UNCTAD? I share a certain disappointment in the statement of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, representing the Government in Nairobi. I have read carefully the text of the address given by the Minister on 13th May. It is not so much a question of faulting him for what he said, but there is a lack of clarity in some areas, a lack of force in others, a careful qualification in the key areas in relation to commodities, and the debt of the developing countries. For example, in relation to commodity problems, his language is, to say the least of it, judicious. The word "diplomatic" was used earlier by Senator Michael D. Higgins. The Minister said:

Commodity problems occupy a central place in the deliberations of our conference. Ireland endorses the concept of effective action in the commodities area as a very important element in the movement towards a more just order of economic relationship among States. We feel, however, that if action is to be effective it must command the general support of the various parties involved and that it should result from thorough examination of all aspects of the problems involved in the case of particular commodities. While we are sensitive to the need to take an overall view of problems in commodity markets, we have reservations in regard to any proposed overall solution which fails to take account of all relevant circumstances in the case of individual commodities. We think it important to proceed on the basis of a case by case examination of the commodities proposed for our consideration since each commodity differs from the others, and each has problems peculiar to itself.

Again, it was not so much what he said, as what he has not said, in very strong terms about the necessity not to seek a formula of delay by detailed consideration of case by case commodities, but to set in motion an integrated solution to the commodities problem with a very stiff timetable of operation.

Similarly, on page 9 of the Minister's released statement, in relation to the problem of debt, he says:

One of the major problems faced by developing countries, particularly by the most seriously affected countries, is the size of their debt service payments. We are concerned that in many cases the debt burden is imposing such severe restraints that their development objectives are seriously hampered. We are inclined to the view that debt problems should be treated on an individual case by case basis in accordance with appropriate criteria taking fully into account the particular development needs of each country.

This is very generalised, uncommitted, hesitantly moving in the right direction perhaps. I submit that Ireland should be seen to be identifying much more closely with the very crucial problems of the developing countries in this area and should be urging countries, which can contribute more significantly, to take seriously this crippling anchor around some of the most chronically disadvantaged developing countries who will not be able to begin to solve their problems unless there is a willingness by the developed countries to write off a significant proportion of these debts.

Apart from the statement by the Minister, I think it is fair to say that Ireland did align herself with the more enlightened developed countries, the group of Sixteen, who were significant in formulating the compromise. I would like to ask the Minister to comment on the difference in approach it makes to Ireland, the fact that the country is a member of the European Community? In many ways it could be said that in relation to our policies towards developing countries we may be hampered by membership of the European Community. We may be hampered by trying to devise a formula where the Community can speak with one voice; and then finding that when we arrive at UNCTAD in Nairobi, certain countries are not concerned at all about the Community speaking with one voice but are concerned about sabotaging any far-reaching proposals for aid to developing countries. To what extent does that leave Ireland compromising initially in trying to seek a Community overall formula and then at a disadvantage when that formula cannot be reached and when other countries, for different reasons, seek to sabotage their interests?

I have made the points I wanted to make. I would end on one final warning: there is insufficient appreciation in Ireland of the fact that any concessions to Third World countries in relation to opening up markets, particularly in the area of agricultural commodities, will hurt us. We must be prepared to realise that as a developing country in the European Community context, Ireland in some areas may be more significantly affected by overall arrangements which may be made. We need extensive educational preparation for this. We must have very distinct priorities in relation to it and we must, I believe, be prepared to give a lead and pay the consequences of giving a lead in order to create a more just economic order.

Mr. Harte

I will not take up too much time. Like other Senators, I am very concerned about the plight of people in the Third World. On the other hand, I do not think anyone can think in terms of saying that they have long-term solutions or that UNCTAD or any other body can provide long-term solutions to the problems of the Third World. For example, in Africa the population will double to about 500 million by the end of the year. In my opinion, no matter what you do for Africa or how far you go, there is no possibility whatever of realising any sort of a reasonable standard of living for anybody in the developing countries of Africa until the end of the century— and it may well go beyond that because I do not think it will be even realised by then.

The question of introducing the technology was also raised. Whether you believe it or not, technology presents problems in itself. If you introduce technology, you also introduce the concept, to some extent, of changing people from one type of slave to another. Technology fixes your thoughts, deeds and to a great extent your movements. Looking at it pragmatically, the introduction of technology would be an immediate need, but it is certainly not going to be the panacea for all ills. You may feed people and help them to develop but there are other things they need as well.

Some countries have embarked on family planning programmes. The African countries do not appear to be that way inclined. Some African leaders believe that their populations should be bigger. If that is the case, they are not helping the situation of trying to get people to make trade agreements with them. Those trade agreements could help their nations thrive and flow at the pace they wish.

The idea of pragmatism was knocked. I am no advocate of the private enterprise society, but I am realistic enough to know that there is no visable signs of it collapsing. In that respect, if you try to develop trade agreements, no matter how much goodwill exists, or how sincere the people are, the people who may help those trade agreements by investments, and so on, will look at the political stability of the country. They will watch the political climate; and they will want to know if the business they set up will be nationalised. They will ask if something be done on licence that might get over the nationalisation. There are quite a number of points to be considered. Senator Robinson mentioned that we could damage ourselves—I do not know exactly how she put it.

Here, for example, the textile industry has been dismantled. That is finding its way into some of the developing countries. There could be other situations that would have that kind of effect. If you are talking about the world as a whole, you cannot overlook your own little bailiwick. There has to be some bias in that direction as well. But by and large, the desire is there but he would be a brave man who would stand up and say that the desire to help the Third World was not there. It is certainly there in my case but at the same time I think there must be a certain amount of realism introduced into the debate.

Mr. M.D. Higgins

I hope Senator Harte is not making a case for national selfishness against universal responsibility.

Mr. Harte

No. In my own limited way, I had sufficient grace to sit down until it was my turn to talk. I was not making that point at all, far from it. I was making the point that certainly you can have the desire, the passion, the feeling about this, but there are situations where you have to be pragmatic. I do not think you can solve all of the problems.

Mr. M.D. Higgins

That is not true.

Mr. Harte

It is my belief. I will leave it at that and let the Minister answer my points.

Mr. Russell

We should be indebted to the movers of this motion for giving us an opportunity of discussing what is undoubtedly the greatest problem in the world today which I suppose boiled down to the bare essentials means the fairest possible distribution of the world's resources.

Our small country, Ireland, is in a unique position to play, if not a leading role, because it is difficult in this day and age to talk of small countries playing a leading role, but a significant role in evolving a system that will ensure a fairer deal for what are described as the developing or Third World countries. It is in the memory of people living today that conditions in this country up to the early years of the present century were not so vastly different from the conditions being experienced in some of the Third World countries today. The word "famine" still has a horrifying sound in the ears of most Irish people, even those separated by several generations from the actual happening. There are people alive whose grandparents experienced the worst of the famine years. Even today, in spite of the tremendous advance made by this country, particularly in the last 50 years, there are still areas that qualify to be described as areas for assistance, as underdeveloped or disadvantaged areas, and we are grouped with areas in Scotland and Italy as among those requiring to be helped by the better off and more affluent countries.

In considering the substance of this motion and the part which we can play, we should be realistic and, I would say, sympathetic to the efforts of the Minister for Foreign Affairs to influence to the best of his ability the direction in which we think this movement for a greater sharing of the fruits of this earth should go. We do live in a largely private enterprise society. It has its advantages and disadvantages. Like Senator Harte, I believe in the private enterprise society while recognising its limitations.

Mr. Harte

I said I do not hold any brief for it.

Mr. Russell

However, on recognising the fact that the State must play a larger part in the economies of every country, even those described as private enterprise countries, we must realise that the system we have today was developed by the affluent countries on behalf of the affluent countries. It is going to take decades before the fruits of victory and progress which they enjoy are going to be shared as many people would like to see them shared with the disadvantaged countries of the world. There is nothing extraordinary about that. It is a perfectly natural human outlook. Very few people would willingly——

Mr. M.D. Higgins

It is not a perfectly natural outlook.

Mr. Russell

We were all born with original sin with the possible exception of Senator Higgins. Nations are no different from individuals and nobody voluntarily reduces his standard of living. If it has to be reduced, it is done involuntarily and by very few people, the vast majority, do everything they possibly can to maintain and improve their standard of living. After the last world war in 1945 which was, if one likes to put it that way, the victory of one group of developed nations over another group of developed nations, that part of the world that was destroyed in World War II was rebuilt by the victors on the basis of the then existing system. In that system the position of the Third World countries, whether we like to admit it or not, was as the receiver of crumbs from the rich man's table and that attitude of mind still permeates the thinking of what formerly would be described as colonial nations, nations that exploited the Third World countries. Again, there is nothing extraordinary in that. The world has evolved along those lines. There has always been victors and vanquished. There has always been exploiters and exploited and I suppose that will go on until the end of time. Unless some new thinking comes into the minds of men and statesmen, and unless some change is made in the existing system, the shareout for as long as one can see is going to be to the advantage of the industrial, better technologically-off nations as against the underdeveloped nations. That is not to say that nothing should be done. In fact, something is being done, but it is not going to evolve overnight.

Human nature is not going to change. Nations are not going to change overnight. The system which up to now has dictated the place of the Third World countries in this world of ours should be changed. It obviously needs fresh ideas, new men and in that regard our country has an influence out of all proportion to its size and has a very important part of play. We are generally acceptable to almost every country in the world, particularly the Third World countries. We are a non-colonial nation. We ourselves have been colonised over the years. We have broken out of the grip of one of the largest colonising nations in the world. We are, therefore, acceptable to the Third World countries. We could in a very significant way, economically and in every other way, be a bridge between the developed world and the Third World or developing countries. We have a very significant part to play in matters of policy. Economically we would have a very important role to play, one that could go down to our advantage as a country between the crossroads to the world. We could have an important economic role to play and one which would benefit our country substantially in purely economic terms.

While one is, perhaps, critical and understandably dissatisfied with the rate of progress in sharing the world's products, one must be realistic and understand that we are to a large extent the prisoners of a system that has been established for a long number of years and which will go on for a long number of years. The path for our Minister for Foreign Affairs and for our country is to do all we can in our unique position to influence a change in the system and, more important, a change in the hearts of men in every country of the world, particularly in the developed countries.

Minister for Foreign Affairs (Dr. FitzGerald)

I am very grateful to those who put down this motion and enabled the House to debate this matter in a kindly way, in the immediate aftermath of the UNCTAD meeting when these issues are alive in people's minds and when we should be turning our thoughts as to how we should follow up the decisions taken there and try to work towards other decisions being taken in areas where the conference was less successful. I was very taken by Senator Horgan's quotations. I had not realised that our colonial tradition was as strongly marked as he suggested. He is, of course, aware of the Irish colony in Brazil in 1619, which owing to the rapacious Portuguese or Dutch was quickly extinguished. Our one effort in that respect lasted only nine months. I seem to recall also that in the early days of the foundation of the State we were approached by a certain middle-eastern group, or people who claimed to represent a certain middle-eastern nation, to take on a protectorate of the area. For various logistic reasons it seemed beyond the means of the State at that time. So our experience has been strictly limited whatever our ambitions may have been half a century ago. As he said, however, times change and men's minds with them, and I do not think that today there are many people in Ireland who think in those particular terms. Because we were part of a state which, in days when we were part of it, undertook a major imperial adventure, many Irish people participated in it, some for ill and some for good.

If one could sort out the contributions of the different races of these islands to the British imperial experience, probably the contribution of Irish people was somewhat more positive because of their own domestic experience than that of other people in these islands. There are many people in this country whose parents or grandparents were in that tradition, many of whom played a constructive part. I have come across many cases of this and cases where people from this country who were working in the British imperial service did work which is still remembered to them in the countries which have since won independence and who contributed to the cultural, social and economical development in a way which perhaps helped towards that independence. Sometimes they had secret sympathies which they did not always entirely hide from the people they were dealing with in those countries. That is part of our tradition which we cannot overlook. It is a fact of history.

Mr. M.D. Higgins

I would suggest it is part of our practice but not of our tradition.

Dr. FitzGerald

The word "tradition" has different meanings. I was not trying to give it any emotive sense.

Senator Higgins allowed, as he is, with respect, inclined to do, his anti-EEC feelings to influence his contribution to some degree. At one stage he spoke sarcastically of the EEC speaking compassionately and perhaps implying that it does not act compassionately. We ought to get this question a little more straight in our minds. What is the EEC? The EEC consists of nine countries and has certain common institutions. These nine countries include countries some of which like the Netherlands——

Mr. M.D. Higgins

This contribution is not in order. On a point of order, I deliberately restrained myself from commenting on the structure of the European Economic Community as it is now. It is unfair of the Minister to give me a descriptive account of what the Community might or might not have been at this stage of his reply. I will respect the Chair's judgement.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

That is not a point of order. The Senator has the right to reply.

Dr. FitzGerald

I am exercising an interim right of reply at the moment. I am replying to Senator Higgins's remarks about the EEC and the very deep irony or sarcasm in his voice when he spoke about the EEC speaking compassionately and those people who had advocated entry into the Community and implying how we had misled the people of Ireland as to what the Community was. That is a familiar theme. As the Senator spoke for some time, I am entitled to make a few brief comments on it.

The EEC consists of nine countries, some of which, like the Netherlands and Ireland, act compassionately and speak compassionately on most occasions in most matters dealing with the Third World. No member of the EEC acts in matters to do with the Third World from motives that are totally self-interested or materialistic. Every member to some degree at some time takes decisions or joins in decisions which go beyond its own material interest and which involve some element, smaller in some countries than in others, of compassion, some element of genuineness and some element of unselfishness. Countries cannot be categorised in these simple terms any more than people. The Community includes also the Commission, which has played a unique role in relation to the Third World which, as Senator Higgins would find if he travelled around the Third World, is remarkably appreciated. The efforts of Commissioner Cheysson command the respect, regard, affection and esteem of people in certainly 50 countries in the world with whom we had to deal. People like him have played a role that has not been attempted previously by anybody from any part of the industrialised world on either side of the Iron Curtain. His efforts and those of the Commission in this respect are unique and should not be denigrated without the point being answered.

The Community has achieved a unique relationship with the Third World which contrasts, obviously and clearly, with the relationships of countries like the United States, Japan, the Soviet Union and the countries of eastern Europe. There is no comparison between the relationship. These other countries have not succeeded in even beginning to enter into the kind of relationship exemplified by the Lomé Convention. The attitude towards them to be found in Third World countries is totally different from the attitude to be found towards the European Community, which has shown a measure of comprehension, genuineness and unselfishness compounded also—be cause all countries, institutions and human beings are mixed—with elements of regard to self-interest as well. There is a very striking contrast and the Nairobi Conference exemplified this, as indeed has the whole process of the last two years of trying to avoid a confrontation between the Third World and industrialised countries. The lead in this process has consistently been taken by the Community. It has brought along with it —I nearly said "dragged"—some of the other industrialised countries, and it is one in which the countries of Eastern Europe have shown no interest whatever and towards which they have made no contributions whatever.

These things need to be said because the constant repetition of these suggestions that the EEC is the epitomy of the capitalist system at its worst are simply false and are known to be false throughout the whole developing world. It is part of the capitalist system. We are all part of it. This country is part of it. Senator Higgins is part of it. Senator Higgins's standard of living, like my own, owes something to the fruits of past exploitation of these countries. Certainly it owes something to an imbalance between the industrialised and developing world of which we should all be ashamed and from which we are all benefiting, and we should not be hypocritical about it. All of us are involved in this, not just particular countries picked out because they happen to be somewhat franker and less hypocritical than others on the subject. These things need to be said by way of general introduction to the debate.

Senator Russell put this in context. There is a system. We are part of a system. We have to work within it to change people's thinking within it. The problem is one of individual human selfishness enlarged to the size of community selfishness, state selfishness and to selfishness in the industrialised world as a whole. It comes back down to the individual concerned about his own material self-interest. That is what we, as politicians, have to try and lead people away from. It is not easy. I am sure Senator Higgins finds in canvassing in Galway, as I found in canvassing in other parts of the country, in going from door to door and talking to people, that you do not meet immediate spontaneous enthuasism for the transfer of resources to the Third World. What you meet among ordinary people faced with the problems of maintaining a standard of living they have become accustomed to is a concern for their own material self-interest. That is an important part of the motivation of most people. It is our job as politicians to try to lead people beyond that and to an idealism that transcends their material self-interest. It is a task which is helped by this kind of debate. That is why I value this debate. I am grateful to Senator Higgins and Senator Horgan for having initiated it.

Senator Robinson asked were we hampered in playing the kind of role we would like to play in regard to the Third World by being in the EEC. The answer is quite the opposite in that we are able to play a role we could not otherwise play. Of course, as an individual country we could go around making speeches and saying how everyone should be generous to the Third World while we ourselves are contributing less than almost any country in Europe, which is the position we inherited from the previous Government and which we are trying to improve upon as rapidly as possible. Of course we could make these speeches while having tariffs against low cost imports to make sure that the imports from these countries do not intrude upon our country and create unemployment.

We have to avoid hypocrisy and face the fact that it is not the position of our country or people that it is willing at this point in time to abolish all controls over imports from these countries, all import controls of this kind being in some sense exploratory. Nor are the people here willing to divert vast sums of money involving a vast reduction in their standard of living to help these other countries. No. People are willing to open their minds to these problems. They are willing to conceive of change and development. They are willing gradually to change. They are willing to make small sacrifices by degrees. They are not willing to face massive unemployment or reductions in living standards as would be required if we were to be utterly consistent with the ideals of the Christian religion or of humanism in our relations with the Third World.

These are facts and they have to be faced. If we were not in the EEC we could no doubt make speeches of this kind very freely. There are occasions when we could, perhaps, say more than we say at present. But we would not be saying it with any great honesty, knowing that by making the speeches we would be having no influence over what would happen and would be perfectly safe to proclaim the desirability of all these things being done knowing that our saying so would not bring them any nearer. Within the Community, however, we can have an influence and do have an influence in the evolution of Community policy. This has been so throughout the three years of our membership, throughout the period of the evolution from confrontation towards discussion and negotiations with the Third World in the last two years, and it was so at the UNCTAD Conference in Nairobi.

While our influence is necessarily small—it is simply another pebble on this particular beach—it helps. There are occasions when, if we were not there, the Netherlands might be a voice speaking on its own on an issue of this kind. A second voice encourages others to join. Sometimes by diplomacy, which Senator Higgins still disapproves of, and by getting people on one side to moderate enthusiasm and for others to moderate their selfishness, we can conciliate, bring things forward, achieve progress and get the EEC to move ahead faster than it would otherwise do. That is the task we have set ourselves in a small and modest way not claiming more than we can achieve in this period of membership of the Community.

Senator Higgins asked are we part of the Third World or are we part of the industrialised world. We are not in a clearcut way totally one or the other because there are not two such clearly divided things that you can set off one against the other. In many ways we are in sympathy with the Third World but by no means always willing to fork out the necessary money to sustain our ideals. But the sympathy is there, certainly. In our relations with these countries we can get on a wavelength with them which is not easy for other member countries to get onto with them. One Third World Foreign Minister with whom I was speaking not very long ago, who is one of the more radical, after we had been discussing some of these problems for a while said to me: "You know I think you are the first European Foreign Minister I have spoken to who talked about neo-colonialism as if he knew what it means". There is some advantage to the Community in having as a member a country which has experienced colonialism until 50 years ago and neo-colonialism until three years ago, and which is able therefore to enter into sympathetic understanding of the problems of the Third World and to convey something of their feelings within the Council of the Community.

But at the same time we are part of the industrialised world. If you take the ratio of GNP per head, Germany's is two-and-a-half times ours; but that of Burundi, for example, is one twenty-fifth of ours. On the scale of wealth in the world we are in the top 25, if not the top 20, out of a 150 nations. We are at the top end of the scale. Relative to these other countries to suggest that we were part of their group and are underdeveloped like them is something that they would laugh to scorn if it were put to them. As far as they are concerned, we are part of the industrialised world, incredibly well off by comparison with them and well able to afford to help them a bit. This is objectively our position, that we are able in a sense to straddle the two in sympathy and in understanding and in that way to contribute to the solution of some of these problems.

Senator Harte put his finger on some of these difficulties when he said this was a real problem. Our sympathies lie with these countries but nonetheless we have to face the fact that, in order to prevent a disruption of our economy, of employment, of our standard of living, a distribution which our people would not accept, we have to adopt methods —tariff protection, quota protection, and so on—which are in their effect exploitatory but which are necessary at this stage because we have not developed to the point where our sense of total solidarity with our fellow human beings lives up to the full standards set for us 2,000 years ago. The original sin from which Senator Russell with great generosity has exempted Senator Higgins—I would not go that far myself—is present in all of us and cannot be ignored.

Senator Higgins spent part of his speech discussing the transfer of technology. He really hit on part of the key to the problem. He is right in saying that the mere transfer of some tiny proportion of GNP as aid cannot offset some of the exploitatory mechanisms that exist, including the control of technology which developed countries have for historical reasons and which makes it impossible for these other countries to achieve as rapid a development as they would wish to do and as they are capable of doing. What they have to pay for this knowledge is a major problem. We understand this because we, too, are importers of capital and technology. On that particular issue our interests and ideals lie with the Third World. This question of the transfer of technology is one which has to be tackled. Senator Harte said, very wisely, that when it is transferred the people concerned may, unless they are careful as to how they develop their economies and social systems be in danger of becoming slaves, new kinds of slaves to the technology they import. We can only hope they will learn from the experience and mistakes made in the industrialised world in this respect.

Senator Horgan raised the question of whether there had been a change in our policy with regard to aid. He felt we had in some way cut back on the percentage to which we were committed. This is not the case at all. What I think is the case is that there may have been a misunderstanding of what our commitment is, though it was stated with clarity. Not everybody is equally numerate and the numerical consequences of the formula may not have been understood completely. What we have said is that we will each year increase the aid we give in absolute terms and as a percentage of GNP and that it is our aim, taking one year with another, to increase this aid by .05 per cent of GNP. That means that in each year our commitment, taking one year with another— and it has to be averaged over the period—is that we will add to the previous year's aid .05 per cent of the estimated GNP of the year in question. But that does not arithmetically increase the percentage of aid by precisely .05 per cent because the total divisor is rising at the same time. In fact, depending upon the rate of inflation the effect of doing this over five years will be to bring, as far as I can recall, our share of GNP that we will be giving in aid to between .25 and .3 per cent.

That is not a change of policy. It is our policy, it is the arithmetic consequences of the policy as announced. I am sorry if anybody has misunderstood that by not reading precisely what was said. Even though it has been explained on a number of occasions it has not got through to everybody. This involves us in the present year, for example, in increasing aid by about £2 million. In fact, we have increased it by more than .05 per cent of the current year's estimated GNP, by .055 per cent, thereby catching up to some degree on a certain shortfall last year. But this is a target, taking one year with another over a five-year period. We are a little behind the target at present, though in this most difficult year the increase was greater than .05 per cent.

I want to discuss the UNCTAD

Conference in more detail. How much time have I?

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

There is no limit on the amount of time which can be taken by a Minister. The other participants in the debate are limited to 20 minutes each. Senator Sanfey has proposed that, should the debate not be concluded by 1 o'clock, we adjourn for lunch at 1 o'clock until 2 o'clock.

Dr. FitzGerald

I wanted to be sure how I stood at this point.

By the time the conference had concluded its work in the early morning of 31st May it had arrived at decisions which will affect us all very closely, because it was awaited with hope and expectation by some and with some little anxiety by others. The developing countries looked to it for decisions which would lead to a new and more favourable structure in the economic relationship between developed and developing countries, while undoubtedly many developed countries feared the international repercussions if they refused to yield at UNCTAD to what they considered to be, in some respects, extreme demands of the developing countries.

In the event, after almost four weeks of complex negotiations on an agenda which covered most of the issues relating to aid and trade policies towards developing countries, the outcome of the conference was positive to a limited degree. A detailed and constructive resolution on commodities was adopted by concensus, one that enables the dialogue between the developed and developing countries to continue in that particular field. There were other resolutions also, notably on the debt burden of the developing countries and the transfer of technology although, as in the case of commodities, these resolutions fell short of the objectives of the developing countries.

In the closing days of the conference it became increasingly clear that the primary aim of the so-called group of 77, who represent well over 100 developing countries, was to further the objective of achieving an integrated programme for commodities such as had been outlined by the secretariat of UNCTAD and discussed in various fora for almost two years. It had never been likely that the developed countries, especially those with a strong ideological attachment to a free market economy, would, at that point in time, be able to accept in full an integrated programme on the lines advocated by the so-called group of 77 and by the UNCTAD secretariat. In the view of the group of 77 a common fund to finance the commodity arrangements would be the corner-stone of a truly integrated programme for commodities. They wanted the common fund agreed in advance of the agreement on particular commodities so as to ensure that prospective agreements on particular commodities would not be frustrated for want of adequate financial backing. The view of the group of 77 was that governments should agree to make the resources available to such a fund before completing the product-by-product negotiations.

The initial view of the great majority of western developed countries was that an overall programme for commodities should respect the characteristics of each commodity and that a common fund should be set up after completion of the product-by-product negotiations, on the grounds that the central financing facility covering commodity arrangements would involve economies of scale, but the kind of facility that would be required would depend on the outcome of these negotiations.

It is worth commenting here that the commodity issue is extremely complex as is shown in the Commission Report of 23rd February 1976 and in earlier Commission documents last year. The position with regard to commodities varies enormously from one to another. There are some commodities which are in fact virtually the monopoly of two or three countries, sometimes indeed confined virtually to South Africa and the Soviet Union—two rather unlikely partners and, one might think, perhaps undesirable people to have a monopoly of something. There are other commodities which are in easy supply for many countries in the world. There are some that are needed by only a very few countries for highly specialised purposes. There are others that are needed very generally.

The arrangements necessary to secure some kind of stability in commodity prices—which could be beneficial both to the supplying countries who suffer greately from massive fluctuations in the return they get from selling these products, and to the developed countries who meet with great inflationary pressures if commodity prices rise sharply—vary greatly from commodity to commodity. There is no single solution. There could not be. I examined last year the commodity lists and the position in regard to each commodity very carefully. I came to the conclusion that it would be difficult to find any arrangement which would suit more than one commodity. Perhaps I am exaggerating, but the degree of difference of the problem in each case is such that it is quite clear that you can achieve stability only by mechanisms which will vary widely. A whole range and battery of different mechanisms will be needed to adjust the free market system with all its defects in order to secure the stability which is in the interests of the industrialised world as well as the developing world.

The case-by-case approach is certainly necessary. I am convinced of that. Whether one decides on the principle of a fund to provide whatever finance is needed for whatever arrangements emerge before the case-by-case study or after it is something one can argue about. Industrialised countries feel in logic that one should find out first of all what the sum total of the different needs are and how much of this involves a financial commitment and how much of the stabilisation effect can be achieved by other means. Many of them feel this should be examined first and then one could see what the financial needs are. That is probably the more logical approach but, psychologically, the developing countries find it difficult to accept, fearing that when the bill is presented at the end it would be so large that perhaps the developed countries would not pay it. They seek, understandably from their point of view, a commitment in principle in advance.

Mr. M.D. Higgins

Is this a suggestion that the developing countries are immune to logic?

Dr. FitzGerald

No, but they are aware of their relative weakness in bargaining power against the industrialised world and are, therefore, not sure that pure logic will determine the outcome. With an approach which might appear logical and attractive to people who are in the stronger position and more able to abandon logic if it does not suit them, those at the weaker or receiving end are more concerned to secure their interests on a basis which may not be quite as logical.

The resolution on commodities adopted by consensus in Nairobi represents a compromise between these two viewpoints. The resolution provides for the inauguration of preparatory meetings and negotiations on individual products as from 1st September, 1976, with a view to concluding negotiations by the end of 1978. It also provides for the convening of a negotiating conference on a common fund not later than 1st March, 1977. This conference is to be preceded by preparatory meetings. This text falls short of an explicit agreement to establish a common fund and subsequent statements on behalf of certain countries, notably the United States and Germany, have indicated a continuing reluctance to accept the principle of such a fund. Nevertheless, it is difficult to deny that the 77 have been given some grounds to expect that a fund of one kind or another will come into existence some time after March, 1977, given the agreement on the convening of a negotiating conference on a common fund by that date.

On the debt question a short three-paragraph resolution was adopted by consensus in Nairobi. The conference welcomed the fact that at the fourth session of UNCTAD the Governments of the developed countries pledged themselves to respond in a multi-lateral framework to the problems of individual debtor countries, especially the least developed. This does not directly affect us. We are not a country which has been in a position to lend money to these countries. Therefore, there are not debts due to Ireland the repayment of which is in question. Whatever settlement is reached on this issue of debts for countries that are in difficulty about repaying will not affect us adversely. To be frank, that somewhat inhibits us from laying down the law as to what should be done. It is not very creditable to go around telling other people they should be willing to have their debts not paid back to them in the happy knowledge that one will lose nothing by it oneself. This is an area, therefore, where I feel the Irish contribution must properly be somewhat muted.

Mr. M.D. Higgins

I made that point.

Dr. FitzGerald

The resolution also contains a guarded suggestion that appropriate existing international fora might devise criteria for the treatment of debtor countries. In accordance with the agreement reached at the conference of an UNCTAD institution there is to be a Ministerial session of the Trade and Development Board in 1977. This session will review the action taken on the resolution on debt.

Speaking more generally on the question of debt, I am inclined to agree with the view that this is a problem which cannot be tackled generally because it is a problem of specific countries that have problems which are simply intolerable. Any attempt to deal with debt problems as a whole could undermine the creditability of the lending of money. It could make people very reluctant to lend over money in the future if it were to be found that countries, even relatively well-off developing countries, were not going to repay. It is important, therefore, that the question of non-repayment should be limited to the specific cases of real need but so as not to undermine the process by which money is made available to them in the future.

In the field of the transfer of technology, to which I referred briefly, the most controversial objective of the group of 77 is to establish a legally-binding code of conduct of technology transfer. This conference did not succeed in defining the juridical nature of the proposed code of conduct. Perhaps it was not to be expected that it could cut this Gordian knot. However, as regards to the other issues in the field of the transfer of technology the outcome was a little more heartening. Three resolutions were passed on this subject, one strengthening the technological capacity of developing countries, one on industrial property and one on the international code of conduct and transfer of technology.

Mr. M.D. Higgins

Absolute rhetoric.

Dr. FitzGerald

Not totally. The progress made is limited because the juridically binding type of approach was not adopted, and it has yet to come. I would not totally underestimate what has been done. In both of these areas, that is the strengthening of technological capacities of the developing countries and rules governing industrial property rights, the technological interests of developing countries are to be given greater consideration, and the fact that there is now an international code of behaviour for the transfer of technology is some small progress. But I agree with Senator Higgins that we are skirting around the main problem which has yet to be settled. I do not think it was realistic to expect it to be settled at this conference. Much remains to be done in that area and our interests, as well as our ideals, lie in progress being achieved here.

In addition, apart from the other things I have mentioned, there were also resolutions on trade, a draft resolution on a set of interrelated and mutually-supporting measures for expansion and diversification of exports of manufactures and semi-manufactures of developing countries and one on multi-lateral trade negotiations. These provide a series of interrelated measures to expand and diversify exports of industrial goods from developing countries. The main concession by the industrial countries is their willingness to improve the generalised customs preferences further still and to expand them beyond the original period of ten years. In addition, there are a number of individual measures to give products from developing countries wider access to markets. All industrialised countries have declared their willingness to let the developing countries have priority, wherever possible, during the GATT round of tariff negotiations which has been in progress for several years past and perhaps will conclude in about two years' time. It is the first time the industrial countries have agreed to the elaboration of special arrangements in favour of developing countries in these negotiations.

Mr. M.D. Higgins

There are no related directives.

Dr. FitzGerald

No, but there is certainly some progress in this area. It is not the area which is perhaps of greatest immediate importance. The matter is really a GATT matter but the fact that some impetus in the GATT is given to the interests of the developing countries is some small progress. I do not wish at any stage to exaggerate the results of the UNCTAD but it would be wrong not to take note of where some little progress is made on matters of this kind.

The United States had hoped that their proposals for an international resources bank would become another major discussion point at the conference. In the event, some members of the group of 77 took the view that to concentrate on the American proposal would be to weaken the application of governments to their efforts to find common ground on the original integrated programme for commodities. Perhaps for this reason, the international resources bank did not make great headway in Nairobi and the resolution on the subject, although proposed by the western group of countries was narrowly defeated on a vote. It is understood that the United States hopes to revive interest in the international resources bank proposal in the framework of the conference on international economic co-operation in Paris.

Another feature of the conference that has not secured all the attention it deserves in the west is that part which dealt with what is called east-south trade that is, trade within the State-trading countries, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the developing world. The East Europeans were not prepared to make any concessions. Indeed, they tried to use the conference to bring in the question of east-west trade and the Helsinki Agreement. This was resisted strongly by all other groups including the developing countries. What came out of that was simply that the East Europeans traded, giving up references to Helsinki, which they had wanted but which were quite irrelevant to this conference, in return for the group of 77 abandoning their principal demand, for example, on aid targets. There was quite a clever ploy by the East Europeans to make an irrelevant demand to get references to east-west trade with Helsinki brought in, and then they conceded that in return for not being pressed for more aid. The aid from the east State-trading countries to the developing countries is, of course, tiny by any standards. It is a fraction in relation to their GNP and the aid given by the West, something which is rarely brought out sufficiently in discussion of this subject.

Mr. M.D. Higgins

When the Minister refers to the east-west decision and then refers to the group of 77 countries, I am sure he would wish to tell the House, not at length, what the group of 77 stand for.

Dr. FitzGerald

There are three groups involved: the State-trading companies, the western industrialised countries and the developing countries. The negotiation I am talking about is that between the State-trading countries and developing countries. There was quite a sharp reaction of the developing countries. I think the Algerian delegate made the point that the time had come for international solidarity and not for apportioning responsibility and for saying who in the past had been imperialists and who had not, which was what the East-European countries seemed to be mainly concerned about. It is worth noting that all the progress made, such as it was, in this conference was as it has been for the last 20 or 30 years between the western industrialised countries and the developing world who have a constructive on-going relationship which contains in it a considerable amount of genuineness and generosity and which involves assistance to developing countries from the industrialised countries which has no similar parallel from the State-trading countries.

Ireland's contribution to UNCTAD, if I may now come to that as it is raised specifically in the motion, was made principally in our role as a member state of the European Community. The Council of Foreign Ministers on 3rd-4th May, before the conference, had attempted to lay down policy guidelines for the Community delegations in Nairobi. This did not succeed. Certain philosophical differences among member states made it impossible to reach the necessary measure of agreement, especially in relation to the integrated programme for commodities and the debt question. So attempted Community coordination, in which Ireland has played an active part, continued in Nairobi and it was only with considerable give and take that the Community was able to adopt positions of sufficient strength to be of value in the deliberations of the conference.

Our position in relation to commodity agreements and the common fund had been made clear by me in reply to a question in the Dáil before we went. This was developed in the Minister for Industry and Commerce's speech to which reference has been made. His intervention on 13th May was a constructive one because at that stage there was clearly developing a confrontation on the issue of the common fund and he joined with some other countries, Community countries in particular, in suggesting a compromise, saying that while the logic of the case-by-case commodity arrangement preceding the agreement of the common fund might be clear, why could we not, even without committing ourselves to a common fund, begin to work out what it would involve? The definitive and the irrevocable decisions can come only at the end of a period of successful analysis and planning, but why should that analysis and examination not now commence? This proposal and others like it occurring at that stage of the debate provided the foundation for the compromise that was eventually agreed.

Next, on 20th May, in discussions proceeding at that point, the Irish delegation suggested a more precise formulation to deal with this matter, using the words "the role the common fund could play", a formulation which was accepted and which remains the key formulation in the Community position from then onwards. Eventually, at negotiations between particular countries in the developing world and particular industrialised countries, a compromise emerged which other Community countries, and Ireland in particular, found it possible to accept— though we could perhaps have gone somewhat further. Unfortunately, at that point two member states in conjunction with two non-Community countries with whom they were in contact felt it necessary to define their particular and limited interpretation of the compromise resolution that had thus been negotiated and approved by the Community. The effects of this have been described as nearly disastrous, and possibly that is correct. Had this position been maintained, had Ireland and other Community countries not exerted great pressure on Germany and the United Kingdom and had that four-power interpreted statement been made, the conference might have broken up in disorder.

To meet the situation thus created certain countries in and outside the Community prepared a more positive statement to counterbalance this interpreted statement then threatened from Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan and the United States. Ireland joined in this and, by proposing a slight modification in the wording to make it more acceptable to a wider number of countries, helped I think to ensure that this statement secured wider support than it might have done, so that eventually we had 16 industrialised countries joining in this more positive statement. That is part of the diplomacy Senator Higgins deplores.

Mr. M.D. Higgins

A Leas-Chathaoirleach, I would like——

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

The Senator may reply at the end.

Dr. FitzGerald

Diplomacy has a certain value because if by modifying a few words here and there you can manage to get much wider support for something than it would have had, then you can achieve much more impact, which is precisely what we succeeded in doing at that point. Senator Robinson used the words "judicious action" rather than "dramatic action". I think her action was both dramatic and judicious and was certainly helpful in getting wide support for this more positive statement which I think helped to save the conference at the end.

I am grateful to the Irish Association for Justice and Peace for the appreciation which they have expressed of our stand at UNCTAD. They were good enough to thank us for the co-operation extended to their representative in Nairobi and we were glad to give whatever assistance we could. The Commission specifically commended the Irish delegation's action in associating itself with this statement at the end of the conference. We were certainly glad of that support.

In the follow-up to the UNCTAD forums it would be necessary to adopt a determined political approach in order to prevent a further crisis arising. We have not, as is clear from this debate and what I have said, achieved a great deal. We have achieved a certain amount in certain areas but on the whole on the fringe of the main problem. We have avoided disaster narrowly at the end and we have left the position open so that there is a possibility of a satisfactory outcome being arrived at creating what has been described in the developing countries as a new world economic order, words which are not approved by all industrialised countries, which I think should be our objective. It will not be easy to achieve this because it is clear that there are some strong reservations on the part of certain countries about the idea of a common fund. It is clear from statements made since the conference by representatives of some of these countries that these reservations persist and will require active diplomacy on our part and that of other member countries of the Community to secure agreement on a positive Community position and to ensure the Community plays the role which it had played so actively and well between the sixth UN Special Session in April, 1974, and the beginning of this year in avoiding confrontation and in getting negotiations going between the industrialised countries and the Third World.

This will not be easy. One cannot be sure of success but it should be our objective to achieve this, and we will work to achieve it. I do not think any group of countries emerged from this conference totally satisfied with the results achieved but the fact that confrontation was avoided gives the international community an opportunity which all of us now have to try to exploit. It can be a matter of some satisfaction to us that, although necessarily in a modest way, Ireland contributed to the movement on the part of the developed countries to reach accommodation with the group of 77 at this conference.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Senator Higgins, before you begin it was agreed this morning that we would break for lunch at 1 o'clock if the debate had not been concluded. Does the House wish to continue on? Senator Higgins would have 20 minutes to conclude in reply to the debate. Will we sit until the debate concludes?

Mr. E. Ryan

If it must end at 1.15 p.m. then we should go on.

Mr. M.D. Higgins

I would like to begin by thanking Senator Horgan for seconding this motion which drew the attention of the Seanad, for the first time in a great deal of time, to an issue which affects the Third World. The point has been made by Senator Robinson in adequate and appropriate compliment to the Minister for Foreign Affairs that he has been willing to attend in the House. I suggest that the things we have discussed have been rather more management affairs than great issues of political philosophy or of principal.

Dr. FitzGerald

If the Senator puts down a motion I will certainly come.

Mr. M.D. Higgins

I assure the Minister that in the course of my 20 minutes I expect many interventions from the distinguished Minister for Foreign Affairs as I will call so much to question.

Senator Horgan, in seconding this motion, more or less did what I should have done if I had more time; he set the basis for the issues concerning the transfer of technology and the historical achievement of what we have done in terms of education. There is no Senator more appropriate to do that. Senator Robinson raised a very real question which I find interesting. The Senator asked whether or not the conference had not floundered. What avoided the conference moving to disaster? Here I come to something that I might say preliminary to my concluding remarks. It is the difference in the use of language between the Minister for Foreign Affairs and I concerning such terms as diplomacy.

When a disaster has been avoided it is referred to as a diplomatic success. In what sense is it a diplomatic success? If you have never dicussed the principles of the two opposing parties, to have taken part in the skirmish is merely the action of the interested person who arrives in the gutter dispute. That is what we have done in our relationship with the Third World. We will not be remembered for diplomatic initiative at the end of the conflict which stopped the rapacious endeavours of the industrialised countries continuing their relationship with the Third World.

Senator Harte expresses what is something which Ireland should address itself to far more generally, that the tendency at a time of international shortage or crisis to look after oneself. After all, we should consider the fragility of Irish industry. But this calls into question the philosophy I asked the Minister to make a statement on as to whether we were engaging in relations with the Third World as a residuum of our economic and political activity or as a conscious activity in which we saw the people in the larger community as equal participants accorded by right under their own terms and under their own cultures.

Why is this referred to? By implication, one accepts the notion that one can engage in discussion of the Third World when one's own economy is all right. My goodness, an elementary student of economics or of political science knows that this is a bastardised description substituted for analysis. Countries are poor because countries are rich and people are dying at present in Asia and Africa because people want to make profits under the structures of every business in the United States and under the emerging structures of the European Community. There is no way one can have one's cake and eat it; and there is no diplomacy, I respectfully suggest, between the right to life and death.

Senator Russell, in a sensitive speech for which I congratulate him, said that perhaps we are prisoners of the system. He was right in saying that. We are prisoners of this awful system, that we will say in the Upper Chamber of the Legislature in Ireland we want notions to go abroad that we will consider the Third World when we can afford to do so. I want to dissociate deliberately the present Minister for Foreign Affairs from such kind of activity. But I might ask the question, where was the answer to the question I posed? The UNCTAD Four meeting raised the question that the Third World saw through the sham. It said, we see the notion of delivering us technology on your own terms and we have our reply to that. What is the achievement in patching up an agreement between the Commission, the industrialised countries, and Ireland with pretensions? It is the achievement of a parlour game in a country that has refused to make up her mind where she stands in relation to the world in need. It is manifestly piecemeal and hopeless.

The Minister referred to a number of things. I liked the tacit answer, although the not overt answer, to my question as to which hat people wore when they attended such conferences. Remember, in the brief outline to my introduction to this motion I suggested that there were many things upon which we could give an answer as suggested by a number of different groups. Few had been answered, but one clearly. The major impetus was towards achieving Community consensus. I want to put an end, once and for all —I wish the Press would note this— to this notion that, every time I make a statement here about Community expenditure, if I made it in a less than positive sense it is somehow or another sarcastic, less than compassionate. It is true that I have not bedecked my car with stickers. I have not put a sticker on my child, or on my wife, or on any of my neighbours. I happen to have asked the Minister, indeed, to remind himself of the advantages of remaining in one place and adjourning into later year history. So even if I do not indulge in such ostentatious behaviour may I say that I realise that the Acts of this Legislature are a reality to me as they are to anybody else, and I respect them. But one cannot dispose of an argument as easily as that. I specifically asked the Minister: was the Irish contribution an EEC contribution, was it an Irish contribution, was it a contribution in favour of the group of the underdeveloped or was it a particularly new contribution? I did not ask a question as to his feelings, as to my feelings now that we have joined what he inaccurately referred to as the European Economic Community—perhaps in a Freudian slip when he realises that it is back to its harsh economic realities rather than its appropriate reference as the European Community, the facade behind which it masks.

It is sometimes said against those who opposed Irish entry into the European Community that they were insular and inward looking. My view on that occasion was that I was international rather than supranational. I believe, as a socialist, in the rights of the world's resources to be used for the world's people. The Minister suggests, for example, that I have called the term diplomacy into question but I have not denigrated international consultation. Far be it from that. I have suggested that the real experience of people in part of this planet is famine and shortage because of gross overusage in another part of the planet. What will be the diplomacy of the relations between the starving and the grossly over-fed? Is there for them a civil service or an Ambassador? If this House is not a place to raise these issues, where is the place to raise them? I remind my fellow Labour Senators who represent workers that it is high time we remembered while we are saying the right to work is valuable to be defended that the right to life is not being allowed in many countries. This is no parlour exercise on my part.

I have asked the Upper Chamber to remember that this country experienced famine, emigration, everything, all the social ills, and now what is it to do? Are we to hear regularly organisational claptrap? We were at such a meeting. It was wonderful. We made it, a contribution to aerodynamics. We went into the air, came down again and we arrived. It is time we said to the world, we have everything in conflict with the United States, West Germany, France and Britain who tried to wreck the UNCTAD Four. The only thing that might be said is that we did not go far enough in separating and distancing ourselves from these industrial countries who have perpetuated such tremendous human havoc and that we are a new country likely to acquire new resources. Potentially it is possible, faced with an entirely new alternative.

The Minister said that we could make speeches and so on but we must avoid hypocrisy. I know him well enough to know he was not referring to my speech when he mentioned hypocrisy. I will offer to the Irish people at all times a cut in Irish living standards if it will make world life more possible, and as a Senator I want to place that on record. I see myself as a member of an international community but what is dreadful is the notion that we must first of all ape all the industrial economies of the world and as a last and dreadful ape of them, when we have something left over offer the worst of crumbs in terms of aid.

I asked the Minister to address himself as a professional economist and sociologist, as I am, to the way the word "develop" had been changed, the way that happened within his lifetime and his practice as a member of the teaching staff of the National University of Ireland. The developing countries of the world were told that there were social obstacles towards their development. He and I have seen in the last decade that what was represented as economic and industrial development was a new form of technological dependency. It is time we sorted out these issues, particularly the academic ones.

For what do we train our people? Someone used the term, "missionaries". Missionaries for what? The Third World has had the missionaries of exploitation. Let us be clear, we can have politics in this House or we can have circus activities, the description of trips, not of political initiatives. I am fascinated by the curious silence in this House on the Fianna Fáil side. Have they a view on the Third World? Did it suddenly emerge when the present Minister took office? To his credit I want to place it on record that he has a greater sensitivity than most of the people with whom I have discussed the issue. How, for example, can one balance these notions of economic growth with transfer of resources to the Third World? The word "hypocrisy" was used in the Minister's final statement a word rarely used.

In summing up the debate on my motion may I recall history: trying to feed a population, failing, resultant death or, the lesser effect, emigration; suddenly massive institutional participation of Ireland and nothing to say about responsibility in Asia and Africa.

This House should debate such issues because by every act of over-consumption we are a participant in famine. As a people we experienced famine. Politics, in the last analysis, is not really an account or a description, it is, in fact, an encounter with how life is and how life might be. We are willing participants at the present without asking sufficient questions. It is a society which is creating world famine and world want. When we attend conferences such as that of UNCTAD we should clearly and openly ally ourselves with those tremendous people, the people who want simply to be free to live, the people we have denied the freedom to live because of our greed. They want to develop their own art, their own story form, their own educational systems. They could teach us. We should have a missionary activity, we should go to these people and encounter those aspects of their culture before we destroy them. We should learn those tremendous normative aspects of communal living which they enjoyed before the private enterprise economic system was established. That is what I had in mind when I put down this motion. Whenever a motion like this is placed on the Seanad Order Paper it is a credit to the Minister that it is taken but it is not an occasion for an account merely. It is asking that the Members of this Chamber debate their attitude to the larger world. It is the position of the Labour Party in Ireland that its vision was larger than any of the nationalist aims, that it set itself towards the achievement of endless dignity for the brotherhood of man. It was for those reasons that I placed this motion on the Order Paper, for which I thank Senator Horgan and I thank the House for having received the motion.

Question put and agreed to.

The Seanad adjourned at 1.15 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Friday, 25th June, 1976.