Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 21 Nov 1984

Vol. 106 No. 2

Aid for Developing Countries: Motion (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:

That Seanad Éireann notes the need for an aid programme directed towards developing countries that excludes military aid for oppressive regimes as a principle and that has no structural disadvantages for aid-receiving countries and asks the Minister for Foreign Affairs to advance this view as part of an integrated foreign policy at home, in the European Community and at the United Nations and further calls for a full report on the Irish and European Community's response to the food problems and famine in several African countries.

—(Senator M. Higgins).

Mrs. Robinson

I am pleased to have this opportunity to support the motion tabled by the Labour Members and to avail of the opportunity to discuss in this House one of the most important and urgent problems facing the entire world and not just this country. I want to remind the House that this motion although it is being discussed against the backdrop of the food crisis in Africa, and that will form part of my contribution as it has of the contribution of other speakers, is one which calls for a thought through policy on development aid. It notes the need for an aid programme which is particularly geared towards the needs and the aspirations of developing countries and which recognises the role that Ireland can play, both as a sovereign country and also within the European Community and the United Nations. It calls specifically for an aid programme of a structured nature which will not have any built in structural disadvantages for aid receiving countries and which will not have any built in component of military aid for oppressive regimes, that this would be a principle of it.

I want to emphasise these aspects of the motion because we are discussing it against the backdrop of the public awareness of the effect on men and women and particularly on children of the very severe drought and famine in Africa. As other Members of the House and indeed Sena-for Michael D. Higgins in proposing this motion emphasised, this is not an instant or a new problem. This is something that those working in those countries have been warning about. We, as Members of both Houses, receive regular bulletins from Trócaire and other agencies on North/South issues. I have one here for June 1984 specifically on Africa's food crisis, specifically spelling out to us the short-term and long-term causes of the particular drought in Africa and the food crisis that has emerged and that we are aware of in our sitting rooms through television and which has provoked such a reaction.

I want to focus at this stage on that reaction. There is no doubt that the imagination of every man, woman and child in this country has been gripped by the severity of the famine and the deaths and the deprivation of the situation in Africa. There is not a school, a resident's association, a tenants' association or women's group that is not doing something for "Ethiopia" or, more broadly, for Africa. That is a very generous, emotional response. Of itself it is important as a very short-term reaction but it could fizzle out very quickly. Memories are short. The media do not keep on covering issues which have already been given full media coverage. The media as a whole does not regard dire poverty as being a media event in itself. We have enough poverty in this country that goes unnoted, and that is not a matter that captures the attention either of the media or indeed of politicians. This is a short-term response. It is one which we must seek to harness and seek to structure more than has happened before. What has happened, and it is extremely important, is that the attention of the public — every man, woman and child — has been captured. There is an audience now for the need for a different and much more accelerated and extensive approach to a development policy and to aid programmes which are based on a well thought out and well structured development policy. In that regard I would like to turn to the conclusion of the report of the Brandt Commission. That report was discussed and debated in this House when it was published, and it was recognised as being a landmark in the sense of drawing attention through the composition of the Brandt Commission and perhaps also through the personality of Willy Brandt, the chairman of the Commission, to the urgency of addressing this area. The report concluded with these words:

Whatever their differences and however profound, there is a mutuality of interest between North and South. The fate of both is intimately connected. The search for solutions is not an act of benevolence but a condition of mutual survival. We believe it is dramatically urgent today to start taking concrete steps without which the world situation can only deteriorate still further, even leading to conflict and catastrophe. It is in a spirit of concern but also of hope that we have formulated the proposals contained in this report.

There was that phrase, which was emphasised, coming from the Brandt Commission at the time of the mutuality of interest between North and South, of the linkage between the developed world and the needs and aspirations and the condition of developing countries but it is something which somehow has been dodged or evaded or laid aside in subsequent discussions where the North-South dialogue has taken place. There is an unwillingness by the North, by those of us who are part of the developed world and in this context, Ireland is privileged and fortunate enough to be part of the developed world — there is a reluctance to see that linkage, to understand that mutuality of interest and in particular, to come to terms with the extent to which we, in the developed world, if we accept accountability for our actions, in many areas worsen the situation in developing countries. We aggravate their problems. We lessen their capacity to address the very real economic and social problem which they have. This is something which must be faced up to and must be faced honestly in seeking to develop an aid programme and a development policy which will achieve the kind of justice and fairness and better balance in the economic resources of the world to which we aspire when Members of this House speak on this subject.

Having put the situation in that way, I have to ask how exactly do the developed countries have a harmful effect on the economies of developing countries. One basic way in which we can and in many ways do this is by halting or slowing up their process of industrialisation or their process of developing their basic industries, of adding any value to those industries, for example, in food processing or in any other sector, by restricting the exports they can send to the developed world. That is why it is important in this motion that we draw attention to Ireland's responsibilities within the European Community and in a broader context to open up this dialogue, to take very seriously the difficulties that are created by the restrictions on trade for the under-developed and developing economies. It makes sense. It is not a complicated point. There are really two main ways in which underdeveloped economies can start to industrialise. The first is to begin processing at home either the agricultural or, if the country is fortunate enough, the mineral commodities, which at present are exported in an unprocessed state. There is no value added. The country does not benefit as much. The value is added later by the developed countries. This does not help the usually very substantially growing population needs of the underdeveloped country.

Secondly, the approach that could be adopted is to start some manufacturing activities which are related to the particular country, for example, textile production. That happens to be one of the areas where developing countries seek to establish a manufacturing base and use that to penetrate the other countries. Of course, their labour is cheaper, and indeed the women provide a very substantial proportion of that cheap labour, but nonetheless it is an attempt to build up their economic base. Yet we, as the European Community, have a very sophisticated system of trade barriers which we employ against imports from developing countries. There are some chinks in it but still it is one of the difficulties which these countries face.

The developed world has sympathy for developing countries particularly when we see on television the pictures of dying children and dessicated human beings reduced to that level of poverty, deprivation and human suffering. Of course we have sympathy, but how does that affect our lifestyle, our deployment of resources, the world's deployment of resources? Is it not a shocking fact of life from which we cannot run away that the resources of the world are so inequitably distributed and so unfairly at the disposal of the developed world? We have what can only be described as a decadence that has to be approached and criticised in a very fundamental way. We have problems of milk super-levies arising from milk mountains in a European Community context. We have before this House today a report of the potential impact on this country of a super-levy being imposed by the European Community to penalise a higher rate of production of milk. That is a very real problem, and the impact on dairy farmers and on particular regions of Ireland is not be be underestimated. All these problems have to be fully appreciated, and it is necessary to acknowledge them in their fullness, because they, nonetheless, have to be viewed within the mutuality of relations on which the Brandt Report laid emphasis and on which, I hope, in our debate on this motion we will also lay emphasis.

That is one kind of relationship, the economic relationship with developing countries. Another relationship referred to in this motion is the shoring up of oppressive regimes, the willingness of the developed world to turn a blind eye not on individualised acts of oppression but on a continuous and sustained oppression against whole sectors of a population. We had an opportunity to debate the United States approach to Central America and to a number of countries there in the context of the proposal to enable President Reagan to address the two Houses of the Oireachtas last June, and many of us were able, at that stage, to query some of the values and some of the basic assumptions in the approach to countries, particularly in Central America and the Philippines. But this is another aspect, the enormous profits which are made by providing military armaments and equipment to developing countries, the shoring up of oppressive regimes through the provision of military aid. This is something which we must face up to and take a very clear policy stand on here in Ireland in developing our approach, which will then determine what kind of aid programme we will be embarking on.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

The Senator has one minute to conclude.

Mrs. Robinson

Yes, it is difficult, in the 15 minutes allocated, to try to reach a rounded and comprehensive position. Basically, I was very pleased that the Minister of State, Deputy O'Keeffe, when he contributed to this debate, made it clear that there will be a very full opportunity in this House to discuss the Government approach to development policy. The importance of this is that we have a very conscious Irish public now, helped by the involvement of many volunteers from Ireland in various development agencies and bodies such as Comhlamh which organise series of lectures during the winter and fora for discussion of these issues. We have now a very aware, sympathetic and basically generous public opinion, but we lack a fully thought through coherent structure on our development policy and we also lack a cutting edge on it. In the context of the EC. Ireland should be getting a name for itself in the context of the EC's policy towards developing countries. We should be very difficult, we should be demanding of the EC a very different kind of approach. Therefore, that is why I would hope that we will have a further opportunity to discuss this in the context of a Government motion when we will not be so constrained for time.

Mrs. Rogers

Much of what I have to say will be repetition of what other Senators have said before me. This motion is indeed very timely, because the real horror of what is happening in the Third World countries has been brought home to us on our television screens and indeed in our newspapers in recent times and the response of the Irish people to that horror has been nothing short of magnificent. I am referring to all the agencies and to the Government as well who have done everything possible to relieve the situation in Ethiopia. It shows the innate Christianity and humanity that is in the Irish people. Having said that, it is important that people should have their minds directed towards the underlying problem, not towards the symptom which is what we are seeing at the moment. The problem is the problem of the difference between rich and poor which is with us in our own country and in other countries but which is at its starkest in the difference between North and South, between the developed world and the under-developed world. I will quote from an article by Fr. Martin Tierney in the Sunday Independent recently, and we ought to be very much aware of this:

There is a myth abroad that aid is a way of helping to lift Africa out of its poverty. Not true. Aid, in particular food aid, is about keeping people alive for the present.

That is the real message we are getting at the moment. We are only, in a way, putting our finger in the dyke, because what we are doing is pouring water into a bucket which has a hole in it. We are not coping with the problem, and famine and poverty and deprivation will continue and worsen in Africa unless something is done to help these countries to develop and to be able to help themselves.

In the seventies the commission chaired by Brandt and the Brandt report made it clear that unless something was done to help the developing countries the consequences would be that poverty and deprivation would get worse in the Third World and that, not even from a humanitarian or Christian point of view but from a self-interest point of view it is important we should help these developing countries. Of course, when these pictures which we see on television disappear and when the papers begin to talk about other matters, the tendency is for people to forget about the problem of Africa until the next famine comes along. This is the problem, because it is not an urgent matter which affects us in our daily lives and therefore people tend not to feel that they have to put pressure on the Government to increase their aid to Third World countries.

There has been a tendency in the past to think that we have to look after our own problems first and then think about other people. There are a number of facts which people should be aware of and be made aware of at present. One of the facts is that there is the disparity between the developing countries and the developed countries. If you draw a line across the 35th degree you will find that above that line 30 per cent of the world's population lives. They own 88 per cent of the world's wealth. Ninety-eight per cent of that 30 per cent are literate. There is one doctor for every 900 people. The Northern world is responsible for 87 per cent of the world's energy consumption, 91 per cent of all exports, 85 per cent of all armament production and 82 per cent of the world's general production. That is the developed countries. Below the line, where the poverty exists, there are 70 per cent of the world's population. They own 12 per cent of the world's wealth, 30 per cent of them are literate, there is one doctor for every 17,000 people. Only 40 per cent have access to safe drinking water. The southern world is responsible for 13 per cent of total energy consumption, 9 per cent of all exports, and 15 per cent of armament production, 18 per cent of general world production. Thirty per cent of the world's population is living at the expense and because of the exploitation of 70 per cent of the world's population.

There are a number of other factors to which I would like to bring your attention. First of all, there is the fable that world hunger happened because of things that are beyond the control of the world, things like climate and because people in the Third World are not quite as intelligent and are not able to help themselves. The fact is that people go to bed hungry in the Third World because of the inaction of the governments in the developed world. World hunger is caused by social injustice and social inequality, it is not something that happens by chance, it is caused by exploitation because in the developing countries cash crops are the important thing, they are important because it is a cheap source of food for the developed countries. So that the rich can get richer and the poor have to be exploited even further. It is not a case of something that cannot be helped.

The problem of hunger in the Third World can be resolved. It can be resolved by a gunuine commitment by the other countries in the world, particularly the super-powers, to stop spending billions of dollars on arms, to stop exploiting these countries as a cheap source of food and to ensure that the proposals of the Brandt commission are adhered to and that 1 per cent of gross national product in every country is given to development in the Third World so that we need never again see the scenes we have seen in recent times on our television screens. It is an indictment of all of us. It is an indictment of the super-powers but we need not really blame the super-powers if we are not prepared ourselves to put the pressure on. That pressure can be put on by neutral countries such as Ireland. We can insist, we can make noises, we can insist that our Government and our Government in turn can insist in the UN and where it has influence that other governments should meet that necessary commitment to help development in the Third World and to help to prevent the atrocious conditions that human beings, 70 per cent of the world's population, are forced to live in. That is something to which our Government should give priority, and the people of Ireland should not forget about the Third World when it is less in the public eye than it is at present. Now is the time for people to commit themselves to pressurising their politicians and, in turn the Government to act and to continue to act in order to ensure that social justice is available in Third World countries.

Mrs. Bulbulia

I am pleased to be able to add my voice to the debate on this important motion. Not often enough do we have an opportunity in this House to raise issues of development co-operation which concern largely only a few Senators who are usually vocal on this topic. I am very pleased that in common with the heightening awareness outside in the community more people than would normally contribute on debates of this kind have been adding their voices, and their feeling has been one of passion and conviction. I welcome the increased numbers who have taken part in this debate.

We are considering this against a background of the most tragic dimensions. The flickering images which we see on our television screens have touched the heart of every person in Ireland. The public response to the tragedy in Ethiopia has been fantastic. We can all be proud of the unbelievably generous response of the Irish people. To date something in the region of £4½ million has poured forth from a public whose hearts have been touched by what they have seen. We have a folk memory in Ireland of famine. That too must help in our willingness to respond to a tragedy of such vast dimensions in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The motion before us is a complex one. It is a composite motion. It is extremely difficult to tease out its different elements and to do justice to each of the sections in the motion. I would particularly like to deal with the food problem in Africa. That is the topical one. It is the one which concerns the vast majority of people. Aid is one thing, as Senator Rodgers has said. It is necessary and proper and correct that food aid in the face of the appalling dilemma in Africa should be forthcoming in great abundance. It is particularly tragic to see a once proud people humbled and begging and to feel that they must be depicted as dying and in an emaciated state before all of us. It is right that there should be a gut feeling on all our parts that we would want to help relieve and alleviate this tragedy. Short term aid, which is what food aid is, will not solve what is an intractable problem. We must realise that. Aid is always about survival, it is not about development.

One of the good things that has come from this motion is that we are going to be given an opportunity early in the New Year to place our development aid policy on the table and discuss it and analyse it, examine it in its totality since its inception and decide where it is going. The shape it is taking and where we would like to go. It is true to say that the ordinary people in the street who are parting with their hard earned cash in such generous fashion — more and more of them are beginning to ask what is all this about, how has it happened, why was it allowed to happen, what are we going to do to prevent it happening, what are the solutions? It is fitting that this House should take part in the kind of debate that is so necessary, particularly in view of the fact that we have a ministry for development co-operation and that we have a Taoiseach who got the whole thing off the ground and who is personally deeply committed to development co-operation and that in a climate of economic recession, the like of which we have not known in Ireland for a long time, it was still found possible in the National Plan to include a section on development co-operation and that while we might not be able to meet our UN target and there might be some slight reduction in our contribution nevertheless our own problems are not going to prevent us from proceeding apace and doing what we can to relieve the plight of Third World countries. Already other tragedies and disasters are pushing Ethiopia and the food situation in Africa off the front pages.

We have seen the Eastbourne tragedy and the tragedy in the west of Ireland where three young men lost their lives. These are all newsworthy; they touch our hearts and they are replacing the Ethiopian situation. Something will replace it tomorrow and something else the next day. But the experts in the field say that this tragedy is going to worsen, and that is a very sobering thought. Despite the fact that we are giving and that aid is being poured in, there is an ongoing problem because the soil erosion is going to continue, drought is going to continue and they need technical assistance and a vast programme of development. Our aid programme is largely based on humanitarian values, which is right and proper and good, but, as Senator Robinson said, it is time for us to hone that policy, it is time for us to give it a sharp cutting edge and it is time for every man, woman and child in this country to be convinced of the value of what we are doing. In many ways the public are ahead of the politicians in this. The politicians should challenge the public now and say to them that if they want us to increase development aid it means that they must take from this programme or that programme, but we must be prepared to do it because the Irish people have shown that their hearts are in the right place. In this instance politicians should give firm leadership and continue implementing the programmes which they have to date.

I want to refer to one particular idea which was brought forward by the President of the Irish Co-operative Organisation Society, Mr. John Barry. He had a proposal to make and it is a good one. It received very little publicity when he made it, largely because it was competing with many other items for newspaper coverage. He, like the IFA and many of the farming organisations as individuals and as bodies, is deeply concerned about the imbalance of resources in our world and in the Third World, and they are seeking ways of making their contribution. Mr. Barry is particularly aware, of course, of the co-responsibility levy, and there are ten measures in all in their allocations in the 1985-86 milk year. There is a total figure of 545 ECUs. There is a section No. 10 under the title "Other Measures" when they are budgeting out their 545 ECUs. There are 19.5 ECUs under a heading "Other Measures", and this is money held in reserve to be allocated to specific programmes if developments in the markets require additional funds or for other needs which may become apparent during the period of the programme. To my way of thinking, and Mr. Barry has proposed this, 19.5 ECUs should be, forthwith, allocated to the food aid programme in Africa. In Irish punts it amounts to £14.62 million. He has pressed the EC Commission on this. He has contacted our own Commissioner, Mr. Richard Burke, and he has solicited the good offices of all these people whom he felt would give this measure a push in the EC. I would like to think that as part and parcel of this motion this idea could be incorporated. It is worth exploring. It seems that there is a subhead there equal to 19.5 million ECUs and it should be considered very strongly that this would be devoted to what is apparent to all, a world crisis of unimaginable content.

The situation has been building up over a number of years and that is one of the particular tragedies. Many people spoke on development co-operation in this House a year and 18 months ago, and all of them although not prophets, alluded to the fact that this was on the cards and was going to happen. The real tragedy and the one the people in the Community cannot understand is how, when so many people knew that this was inevitable, it was allowed to happen. There is something immoral about that and there is something wrong. It tells all of us something about our values and about the reasons why we choose to trade as we do and choose to group as we do and choose to ignore, until we can no longer ignore, appalling human suffering, degradation and dire tragedy. That is inexcusable and unforgiveable, and I hope that it will never happen again and that there will be an outcry and an outburst of indignation that such a thing can happen.

Since the end of the seventies the 39 countries which make up sub-Saharan Africa have been experiencing a steady decline into deeper poverty. This drought that has been talked about has been going on now for about three years. But even before the drought, food production in Africa had been falling and grain output per head was declining by 2 per cent per year since 1970. This decline in economic activity and food output has been accompanied by rapid population growth. The World Bank recently pointed out that if this trend continues per capita, production of food in 1988 will be the same as this year even if 1988 has normal rainfall. We cannot say we do not know about the dimensions of the future problem because all the experts and all the people who can read the signs and portents have indicated to us very clearly that the problem is going to get worse.

Many of the problems of the region stem from climate and soil conditions. It has been widely known for many years that there are large areas in Africa which are vulnerable to drought and famine because of the precarious dependence on rain-fed agriculture. In Ethiopia a prolonged famine killed an estimated 200,000 people between 1972 and 1974. Almost a year ago there was mounting evidence of large numbers of hungry people migrating in search of food and this, of course, throws up another human problem, that of refugees, displaced persons who are finding that they not only have a problem of hunger but that they are displaced, unwelcome and unwanted wherever they find themselves.

The Ethiopian Government have been appealing to foreign governments for emergency food since 1982 and they used their own stocks of food to meet the needs of the growing numbers of people affected by drought and other calamities. The emergency food supplies will save many lives. The bales of Foxford blankets which were rolled down the tarmacadam of the airport in Addis Ababa will keep many people warm. However, we must ask why can Africa no longer feed itself? There are several reasons. One of the important reasons is that many African Governments have allocated only a small proportion of their budgets to agriculture. There has been insufficient research into improved crop varieties and growing methods. Foreign aid donors have not always understood how to help small scale farming and have too often supported large scale export oriented schemes with little impact on food production.

One necessary step must be to ensure that small farmers have access to land or the goal of adequate food production will not be met. But access to land will not be sufficient so long as the problems of a shortage of foreign exchange continues, because farmers also need imported fertilisers, pesticides, farm implements and spares as well as fuel for irrigation, pumps and tractors. There is so much that can be said about this, because food and energy are increasingly inter-related, and if energy prices rise so does the cost of imports and the direct use of energy in agriculture causes food to become more expensive. It is a vast problem and I am unhappy that there are only 15 minutes in which to explore one tiny element of what is a composite motion.

I hope that when we have another opportunity which has been promised to us early in the new year, without the constraints of time, the Members of this House — and they are happily a growing number who have shown interest in development co-operation — will have an opportunity to thrash out with the Minister the elements of our policy for development co-operation. That is something I very much look forward to. I am pleased to have an opportunity on this occasion to express my admiration and appreciation of all that the Irish people have done, my pleasure at seeing that development co-operation matters did not slip out of the national plan but were firmly in it and I look forward to hearing from the Minister of State, Deputy Jim O'Keeffe, when he returns from Ethiopia, a first-hand account of what the situation is like there and what suffering Irish aid has been enabled to alleviate.

An Cathaoirleach

Senator Higgins has 15 minutes.

Mr. M. Higgins

I would not mind donating five of those to Senator Robb if it is in order.

Mr. Robb

I thank Senator Michael Higgins from the bottom of my northern heart for his generosity. I will try to make it three minutes.

We are emphasising the need to give to the Third World in much the same way as we talk about forgiveness. We have not looked at the other side of the coin, which in terms of forgiveness is asking for forgiveness. Is there nothing we have to change about ourselves and about our own country in the context of the total resources of the world if we are going to be able to share within the context of the ecological balance of natural resources in the world so that the Third World may in fact have some equality with us? This morning on RTE radio I listened to two people from the Burren, two English unemployed people who arrived here with no job. One was a sculptor and the other worked in craft. They built a round stone house over two years. They managed to scrape together enough to buy five acres of rocky land and they are almost self-sufficient. But what is more important is that their life style had changed. They had come to terms with themselves and their environment and there had been a spiritual regeneration inside them which left them contented, well-integrated people living as they did.

All I am saying is that if we are going to help the world in general people in the West will have to reduce their consumption and change their style. It will not happen with affluent people like ourselves, but the new generation are changing. It is necessary, therefore, to consider encouraging a return to asceticism and away from materialism as the guiding force in life.

We need to place more emphasis in our life and particularly among the religious in relation to silence, solitude, reflection, retreat, and, dare I suggest it, fasting? I thought one of the great things that happened in recent times was the appeal from the Catholic Church for a period of fasting. We need to look very seriously at the role of vegetarianism. I cannot quote the figures, but apart from the reverence for life that that implies, we know now that to feed an animal which you then slaughter to eat takes up much more of the vegetable resources of the world than if you eat the vegetable protein without going through the animal process on the way.

If we are talking about a development of a reverence for life we are talking about development of reverence for marine life as well as for animal and human life. Therefore, we should emphasise the need to reject all unnecessary killing. We need to think what is our basic need in relation, not only to the resources that exist but in relation to the resources as they will affect the lives of the generations to come.

Are we living just on borrowed money and on borrowed time? I do not think we are, but we are certainly doing it in the context of the generations ahead of us. We need, therefore, to define need much more carefully in relation to people where they are living in a community rather than to have that need continually dictated by remote pinnacles of centralisation which kindle expectation that cannot be met for the 8,000 million people in the world and furthermore hold on to the power which results in the entrepreneurial colonialism to which Senators have referred and which denudes the Third World of resources and creates these great debts which they cannot pay back to the West.

Above all, we need to look, in Ireland as much as anywhere else, at marginalisation. It is no good us rolling up blankets, filling the planes up with food and sending them off to Ethiopia if we are not genuinely concerned at what goes on and doing something effective and prepared to communicate with those who live in Ballyfermot, Ballymun, Ballymurphy, the Creggan, the Bogside and parts of the Waterside.

Attitudes, therefore, will be increasingly important as we move into the new era of high technology if we are not going to destroy ourselves. We should emphasise that while it is right that we should find a new politic for distribution, it is also right that we should consider how much of our consumption we might be able to reduce so that world resources can be shared with the world's people. Otherwise we face a simple choice, apocalypse or transformation.

Mr. M. Higgins

I am very grateful to the Senators who have contributed to this motion moved by myself and Senator Robinson on behalf of the Labour group in the Seanad and which is so generously supported by Senators of all parties in the House Senator Ferris, in seconding the motion, drew attention to striking statistics, for example that 1978 saw the death from malnutrition of thirty million children under the age of five years. The thrust of this motion is not only to make it possible that children would survive but that they could live towards adulthood in conditions of dignity and sufficiency. That issue has been addressed by many Senators. Senator Ferris mentioned the 35 per cent unemployment rate which is characteristic for under-developed countries. He mentioned the absolute poverty of so many people in the Third World and the imbalance in resources which is reflected in the consumption pattern of the world to which Senator Robb made reference.

Senator Mark Killilea in a generous contribution made many references in support of this motion, for which I am very grateful to him and to the Fianna Fáil group in the House. He mentioned in particular the whole question of the situation of countries without a food production capacity. That is a very fair point, because it is a very often neglected aspect in debates on development strategy. Many countries who will never have food production capacity are very much militated against in imbalances in the terms of trade which have affected their foreign exchange. For that reason if you take a country like Senegal where 75 per cent of the export earnings come from peanuts, or Chad where 80 per cent of the exports come from raw cotton, there is a very real point here and we see and can elicit an immediate point, that the problems of the Third World are not contained within their own boundaries but within a wider structure of world relationships that involves patterns of trade, aid and debt relationship. This is a very important point. There is no doubt that while our hearts are moved by the immediate threats of famine, the real test is whether we are willing to move from this criterion of compassion towards a criterion of justice. I am unhappy about using the word "justice" because in the pursuit of justice many different political philosophies and ideologies are locked in conflict. I am only making the point as an emperical historical statement after listening to this debate that nobody can explain the death of children from malnutrition or the whole question of famine in terms of the countries or the continents that are involved. What is important is a qualitative shift in the political relationships of the so-called developed world and the undeveloped world. We have said in this House last week and today that we support such a shift.

Senator Dooge made reference to something which is of great importance, because his contribution had a more than ordinary significance in so far as he is involved in a technical capacity in relation to analysing the threat of drought. He is the living embarrassing presence of the fact that in the seventies one scientific commission after another had predicted the droughts in Africa and the food shortages that would affect that continent. This was insufficient to move the political structures of the world. An old French novelist used to say "How much blood must flow out under the door before people will believe that a murder has been committed"? I made reference in moving this motion to the fact that one could draw parallels between the lack of interest in human rights generally until the great revelations at the end of the Second World War when it was revealed what people had done to each other in the concentration camps. People felt that they had encountered a base line in human behaviour.

It is a matter for congratulation, and I did so in moving this motion, that the Irish people have singularly excepted themselves amongst the European Community. It is wonderfully reassuring in relation to their generosity. It is important that we would have a political consensus that would harness that and turn it into a positive response in relation to overseas development aid.

I would like to remind the House that I have made a number of very specific proposals. The Minister will have the support of my party in restoring the national target towards reaching the United Nations target in relation to overseas development aid.

I also made a proposal that the White Paper which is forthcoming and which is very welcome will include a structural analysis from which arises a great number of questions. Separate from our other commitments in the international political arena we should analyse correctly the reason how we have undeveloped many of the countries that are now in trouble. This is the moment, intellectually and morally, for people. Do you believe that there are two separate worlds? I made reference to this in moving this motion. When I was a student in the National University of Ireland at Galway, people spoke of developed countries that had the capacity to develop and undeveloped countries which lacked resources, lacked achievement orientation, as if you were starting a car. It was as if there were two separate worlds.

In coming to Senator Robb's contribution, there is some evidence that we are beginning to recognise the problem. We live on one planet and on one world. In terms of the history of economics and sociology we must realise that in condemning over the centuries primary commodity producing countries to low prices we are condemning them to poverty and that in insisting on retaining the structure of international debt regulation agencies such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Bank we are not responding to the credit needs of Africa. Equally in relation to trade, arrangements of the so called developed world are exclusive of the possibility for making export earnings from any of these countries.

I would like to give a technical example of that in the countries which are above the category to which Senator Killilea referred. Countries which have been possibly able to produce food, for example, through the use of new fertilisers, those based on photosynthesis, for example, would be obviously applicable, but it is likely that they will be patented and sold to that part of the world for profit rather than allow them to be transferred as a profit free technology.

Senator Charlie McDonald made a very important point to which I have already referred, the vulnerability of an economy that is dependent on a single crop.

Senator B. Ryan raised the question of the immoral concentration of spending on armaments. We know, for example, through UNICEF's report on the state of the children of the world in 1983, that there were four major developments — oral rehydration therapy, heat resistant vaccines, growth charts and forms of family planning which could make a major impact on the number of children who are lost in the first three years of life. While this technically became possible, first the aid froze and then it began to drop and we went on to reach the immoral norm of having created three to four tons of nuclear destructive capacity for every man, woman and child on the planet.

Senator Robinson emphasised the point I made in relation to the structure and nature of the problem. That is the question. It is easy to give in a way, and we have given an extraordinary amount. What is important is that we make the leap towards realising that we are at one with the world that we are seeking to assist. We should move on towards a structural analysis and a recognition that we have to move towards that in our policy.

Senator Rogers spoke of North-South relationships and I agree with her even though I had said quite frankly, that the Brandt report was in many ways a pathetic Western philosophical document towards solving the problem. It was good and it was accepted. It had two principles, firstly, self-interest in that we could regenerate our own economy while helping them and, secondly, it has some kind of moral appeal. It was a very weak document in that regard, far short of any ideological major shift in relation to North and South but even it has been forgotten.

Senator Bulbulia made some very valuable suggestions in relation to the question of being able to assist within the context of the European Community and emphasised the point of moving beyond humanitarian aid.

I agree with Senator Robb. I could sense a certain unease as he spoke of marginalisation, spiritual regeneration and ecological balance, concepts which are not normally used within the discourse of transacted politics in these Houses. I want to support him in using these concepts because he is right. In having a comprehensive overseas development aid strategy he is developing the concept of oneness.

I want to conclude by saying that the basic principle of this motion is that our development aid policy which we will debate in January should be comprehensive and address itself to the structural principle. Senator Robb is absolutely right. If we accept oneness and global responsibility that it is a very important sense of development. Let us think about this.

I shall conclude by saying, would it not be very schizophrenic if we needed to be moved by great poverty in a distant way and we were unable to respond to poverty at home? My reason in moving the motion, as I have said, was that in taking the hurt of the world into ourselves we grow as a people and in our growth we become better able to respond to the deficiencies at home.

The principles of this motion are: that we have a policy that is comprehensive; that it accepts structural analysis of development aid policy; that development aid policy be not a disadvantaged area within foreign policy in general and that once we have established these principles they be prosecuted with enthusiasm and rigour within all the fora in which we are represented. Lest it be thought that I was ungracious — the reason I have not referred extensively to the speech of the Minister of State is that I have found it one of the most positive speeches in the development aid debate in some years. I very much appreciated the Minister's presence in the House last week and the manner in which he has carried this issue forward.

Question put and agreed to.