I will speak mainly to item No. 6, even though it has been agreed to debate motions Nos. 6, 7 and 8 together. It is somewhat difficult to speak in the absence of the customary six monthly report on the developments within the EC, so I would like to range casually over a whole series of items, many of them well publicised but some which have scarcely gained any recognition whatever in the public media.
One of the immediate results of the tragic famine in Ethiopia has been to focus the attention of everybody on EC food policy. I would like to avail of this opportunity to congratulate our Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Jim O'Keeffe, on the exemplary manner in which he handled his role as co-ordinator of EC aid for the famine-stricken victims. The need for a fully integrated food policy has become very obvious.
Recently we have had the long and tortuous but fruitful negotiations with regard to the super-levy problem in order to handle surplus dairy products within the Community. It is quite obvious, however, that with surpluses in beef and cereals we are also talking about levies in these areas. Indeed, we can justifiably predict that they are literally just around the corner.
One may argue from the standpoint that it is far better to have to contend with this surplus situation than a shortfall. One must consider that the cost of storing the butter mountain of one million tonnes amounts to £720,000 per day, just for storage alone, coupled with something in the region of £1 million to keep our beef stored in intervention. The whole scale of the problem is put very much into perspective. While we may laud the exercise of giving cheap butter at Christmas time to everybody, I do not think it is seriously addressing the problem. While it may sweeten people's view of the European Community it is certainly nothing but a stop gap solution which in the long term will probably de-stabilise the market by breaking the generally even pattern of consumption.
While there are glaring deficiencies in the EC relief effort we must say in defence of the EC that its relief effort has been going on for a very long time. I would point to last April, for example, when the European Community approved over £57 million for a programme to combat drought and famine in Ethiopia. Again, it devoted further finance for the arid sub-Saharian regions further south in Africa. Yet, this substantial cash funding got very little attention and precious few headlines from our EC correspondents. I would blame the journalistic representatives of the main papers in this country who are our representatives in Brussels for not focussing sufficient attention on the degree of ongoing assistance which has been forthcoming from the Community for famine-striken areas and by way of positive development of their own resources. Generally, the cause of the lack of exposure and the lack of publicity could be put down to the fact that there were more immediate and pressing and more exciting negotiations going on at that particular point in time — last April — when our super-levy negotiations were in full flight.
One of the fundamental problems of underdeveloped countries is that we dump EC surplus food production on world markets and in doing so we undermine their traditional economies and their self-sufficiency programmes. In Europe, for example, we subsidise hothouse producers of fruit and vegetables which would grow quite naturally in the climates of these underdeveloped countries whose industries are destroyed by the big trading blocks, particularly by their trading policies. The EC, for example, has continued to increase its sugar production despite the repeated warnings that it is the staple crop of many of the economies of these underdeveloped countries. For long the Development Committee of the European Parliament has been warning that the EC's food aid programme is destroying the self-sufficiency of the Third World.
However, here we must draw a distinction between the long term strategy of granting aid to develop agriculture in the poorer countries and the immediate need to get urgently-needed relief to the starving millions. A problem that has emerged very clearly from the most recent famine and one that will have to be addressed for future such contingencies is the absolute necessity of mobilising aid far sooner than has happened on this occasion or on previous occasions. Many people die before we are even aware of the famine. Many more die in the stricken areas because we are unable in the initial stages to get little more than a trickle of food to the starving victims. We are talking literally of thousands dying by the hour as a result of such delays. It is a situation where every hour counts. I would make the point that if Berlin could be relieved for a considerable period by airlifting supplies on a constant daily basis by the Western allies then surely it is possible for us to do so in Ethiopia 40 years later. Surely it is within the competency and capability and the resources and potential of the armed forces of Europe who have the knowledge, the manpower, the aircraft and the technology to do so immediately that such an emergency arises no matter what part of the world it arises in in the future.
We are now reaching the crucial stage, it has been acknowledged, in this particular tragedy because the initial response, despite the fact that it was enormously heartening and enormously generous, is very much tapering off, and it is quite obvious that the momentum must be maintained for a period of six to nine months if we are even to contain the problem at its present level. I do not want to be accused of morbidity in my contribution but I will continue briefly in much the same vein by stressing that the recent pesticide tragedy in India has helped to focus attention on the use of pesticides and chemicals in agriculture within the European Economic Community. One welcomes the commitment of the Minister for Agriculture to the introduction of a Pesticide Bill. We have the problem in many EC countries where the disposal of animal manure has become a tremendous problem, just as great a problem, in fact, as the overuse or the abuse of fertilisers. In the Netherlands, for example, the nitrate levels in ground water is now 30 milligrammes per litre and although the World Health Organisation standards are 50 milligrammes per litre it is estimated that, at the present rate of increase, within a decade much of the land of the Netherlands, unless emergency measures are taken, will in fact not be usable for the production of food for human consumption.
Cadmium — which is heavy metal — levels in soil are increasing, again at an enormous rate due in many cases to sewerage, sludge, potassium and fertilisers. At this rate, again, it has been estimated that within a century or so the arable lands of Western Europe would be no longer suitable for the production of crops for human consumption. When one considers that Western Europe contains only about 7 per cent of the world's arable land and that it uses about 25 per cent of the world's annual consumption of pesticides and 17 per cent of the fertilisers used globally, it can be seen quite clearly that there is an urgent need for the development of criteria for the usage of both pesticides and fertilisers. It is a Bill, therefore, which is urgently needed, there is nothing like prevention and indeed at EC level it is quite obvious that there will have to be integrated pest-management control procedures and regulations. Environmental alarm bells were also sounded quite recently in the extensive damage done to the West German forests. The damage in these traditionally very famous forests of Bohemia, Saxony, the Black Forest region, has increased from 8 per cent in 1982 to 34 per cent last year, mainly caused by air pollution. Again, this highlights the need once and for all for pollution-free cars and the development of technology in order to minimise the effect of pollution and emission from such cars and combustion engines.
On the lighter side, I would like to stitch into the record of the House my particular welcome for the additional £90 million of EC regional funds which have been made available for the creation of 5,500 jobs. We note with considerable satisfaction that these will grant-aid the development of three new digital exchanges together with 23 rural subscriber units, and, furthermore, that this money will be needed for the development of our national primary routes and our national secondary routes in order to bring our standards of main route traffic and roads up to comparable EC standards.
From the Government's viewpoint one of the most heartening aspects has been the EC Commission's Economic Report and its endorsement of the Government's economic strategy. In particular the Commission's report underlines, approves, endorses and encourages the Government to maintain this policy in two particular areas, and that is in relation to pay restraint and public sector cuts. It is nice that the people who ultimately are the people funding many of the operations here should be the people that would be in a position to call the tune. While there has been a fair degree of scepticism and a fair degree of criticism and indeed many scathing and derisory comments in relation to the Government's economic policy, the period of the development of our economy up to the emergence of the Building on Reality plan was a very, very fruitful period.
The Government, in fairness, were not in a position to launch forth with any kind of a plan unless it had got basic component items of the economy right. Inflation has been cut to almost a third of what it was two years ago. Our balance of payments has been on the right side for 11 out of the last 14 months. We had managed to decelerate the growth in unemployment and consequently as a result of these initiatives are now in a position to launch forth with an economic plan costed, itemised, with definite objectives and realisable targets within specified deadlines. It is that type of positive achievement and that type of positive planning that has won the endorsement of the EC Commission for budgetary policy and economic strategy.
I conclude as I commenced and that is by congratulating the Taoiseach on his handling on his EC Presidential term. It was a period of difficult and at times of traumatic negotiations, but it was a period which was rounded off in a most exemplary manner, a most fruitful and thoroughly rewarding manner in the historic achievement in relation to agreement on wine and wine-producing states. When one gleans from the various Heads of State their reaction by way of very fulsome praise for the handling of matters by the Taoiseach, one sees very much in perspective the esteem and the respect with which he is held as a European and as a European statesman. It is most refreshing for a very tiny country, both in terms of size and in terms of population, that we should be able to discharge our function at the apex and pinnacle of EC affairs with such satisfaction and win such fulsome praise from quarters from which it is very often not so readily forthcoming. I compliment the various Ministers who as heads of their respective portfolio groupings within the EC have performed their tasks and fulfilled their stewardships, again with considerable confidence and with considerable results.
