Today in the Dáil there were eight questions on ODA budget levels. On the Dáil's Order Paper there is a motion on the issue to be debated soon. Here in the Seanad we are addressing the same topic.
I warmly welcome this interest in development aid. It is a heartening reflection of the public support for a strong and growing Irish programme. This was attested to recently in a nationwide survey. The political consensus in support of a substantial and effective aid programme, which is implicit in this interest, is important. I echo the point made by the Taoiseach recently that there is no Member of either House who opposes the idea of a strong programme or of growing allocations for it. For my part, I am pleased to have this opportunity to address the Seanad on this topic on behalf of my colleague the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, whose energy and commitment have been the key driving force behind our development co-operation policy in recent years.
At the heart of the motion is the issue of budget allocations for the development aid programme. Although the matter has been addressed a number of times in both Houses, I reiterate that the total development aid budget for 1999 is likely to total £178 million and we estimate an outturn of £190 million for the current year. This is the highest level ever attained and is the result of an unprecedented level of growth in recent years. The extent of that growth will be clear if Members recall that in 1992 the total aid provision was a mere £40 million. In the last three years alone, it was increased by £12 million, £15 million and £38 million, respectively. It is important, in commenting on allocations, that these facts are kept in mind. The Government has shown real commitment to substantial increases in our contribution to the developing world and is determined to continue that commitment.
There has been lively debate on the issue of our progress to the UN target of 0.7% of GNP. This is desirable and legitimate. The Government and its predecessors have pledged themselves to steady progress to meet that target. That pledge has been honoured as demonstrated by the record of substantial annual increases, at a rate which outpaces that of most member states of the OECD.
We have to accept, however, that because of a unique combination of circumstances, it has been difficult to make progress according to the benchmark of growth as a percentage of our gross national product. The first of those circumstances is the unprecedented annual growth in the Irish economy which we have been experiencing in the last five years.
We have been criticised as complaining about that level of growth and as using it as an excuse for lack of progress in the aid budget. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Government and all our citizens cannot but be delighted at the turnaround in the economy. Its current healthy state – the result of years of wise policies – allows us address a wide range of domestic issues, from infrastructure to hospital queues, which it has not been possible to tackle until now. It permits us to make generous provision for our overseas assistance and to commit ourselves to continue doing so into the future.
The second circumstance is that we have introduced a new method of calculating GNP in accordance with EU rules. This has had the effect of depressing the percentage figure for the ODA budget. It should not, however, be allowed to mask the reality which is that our aid budget is one of the fastest growing in the world.
Members should not take the view that the Government has abandoned the goal of reaching 0.7% of GNP. On the contrary, at a time when we have joined the ranks of wealthy nations, we are more than ever concerned to ensure that the aid programme should not stall or diminish as a proportion of our national wealth. To address this issue, a fundamental series of reviews has been carried out in the Department of Foreign Affairs. A set of proposals has been prepared for Cabinet consideration. The Minister and the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs will be working on these in the coming weeks. They would hope to have decisions shortly.
Underpinning these proposals and the thrust of the whole programme is the determination to ensure that the aid budget is used to achieve enduring, sustainable development. That issue of quality aid is vital. Any current or former aid worker will tell you that Africa is pitted with the flaking rust of failed aid projects, the relics of western ideas imposed on developing countries without reference to local consideration or need.
The Irish programme is focused on quality. Last year the programme was reviewed by its peer donors in the OECD. That review found that Ireland sets high standards for aid; we have demonstrated that aid can work; we have an undeviating focus on poverty reduction; and we are a strong performer in putting partnerships into practice.
This quality aid, which is at the heart of the Irish programme and to which the OECD peer review is a handsome testament, took years of patient work to build. A real working partnership with a developing country begins with building an understanding of its people's reality, with getting beneath the skin of the daily challenges and with, as Abraham Lincoln put it, "shuffling a while in another man's shoes". It is slow, patient work to get beyond the barriers, common in any environment of poverty, of low self-esteem. We must also get beyond the assumption that outside know-how is better and we must reach a common understanding of needs. An authoritative international aid expert, addressing a forum in Dublin a few months ago, summed up his caution regarding quick aid with the tongue-in-cheek quip, "Don't just do something, stand there".
Ireland makes no grandiose claims to have cracked the code on quality aid. The peer review was a welcome plaudit for past hard work. However, maintaining that reputation of quality requires more of the same patient, hard work and more of the slow build-up to the common understanding on which the partnership process is built. What is more, we must continue to build up our own management capacities to ensure continuing quality, effectiveness and accountability.
What all of this points to, in the context of growing allocations, is that a balance must be struck between the requirements of quality and chasing what is, in reality, a moving target. Quality aid requires planned, prudent growth in aid involvement and management capacity, both among donors and partner governments. These are the important issues which will have lasting beneficial impact on the lives and livelihoods of poor people in developing countries. We must not allow an exclusive focus on targets to divert our attention from these priorities. That is the thrust of our review and the basis on which we hope to secure agreement on a path to the UN target.
A related issue which has been raised recently is that of putting allocations on a statutory footing. There is some merit in this on the face of it, but I would question it. My main question is whether there is a need for it. The purpose of such a move is to increase allocations. However, if they are going to increase, as I hope, in a measured way, that purpose is achieved. Second, if one can conceive of aid being put on such a basis, then why not other deserving causes? Seen thus, putting ODA allocations on a statutory footing is potentially an unnecessary complication.
I will take the opportunity of this motion to give a short overview of where the programme is going and its priorities. I will begin with the bilateral programme.
The focus of Ireland Aid is on the least developed countries, and that of the bilateral programme is on six such countries in Africa – Lesotho, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and Mozambique. All these countries rank low in terms of human development indicators, includ ing the percentage living in absolute poverty, life expectancy, adult literacy, infant mortality, access to safe water, sanitation and health services.
In these six priority countries, the thrust of the programme is on basic needs, including rural development, education and health, and on a framework of democracy and good governance. In the health sector, we work with governments and local authorities to provide primary health care. In education, we focus together on primary and informal education, teacher training and adult literacy. In rural development, we fund programmes for food security, rural roads, provision of clean water and sanitation, and micro-credit, especially for women. In all these, we work with our partners to ensure that women's and men's needs are met appropriately and that there is respect for the environment.
Most aid in the priority countries is delivered in the form of integrated programmes at regional or local level. These are selected in consultation and partnership with governments in the priority countries. More recently, we have been working with governments and other donor countries on sectoral investment programmes. In these cases, aid is provided in the form of general budgetary support to sectors such as health and education. The aim here is to reduce the burden on under-resourced administrations of dealing with a plethora of donors and to help build the internal capacity of the governments concerned to push forward their own development.
The guiding principles that inform the bilateral involvement are summed up as the three Ps – poverty, participation and partnership. The universal strategy is poverty reduction. Participation refers not simply to local involvement but to real ownership by the partner government in accordance with its own national priorities of development programmes. Partnership involves the use of local administrative structures and building wider understanding and enduring trust.
There are many challenges in our programmes in Africa. One of the greatest is the HIV/AIDS epidemic. As at least one Member of this House – Senator Henry, whom we have heard speak – can testify from a recent visit, this disease is a major public health problem in all our priority countries. Its spread has huge economic and social effects and has set back development progress in many areas by years.
Ireland Aid, together with partner governments and other donors, has been responding to these challenges in the past 15 years. The lessons from this experience have been drawn together in a new strategy which we recently launched. At the same time, the Taoiseach has written to EU Commission President Prodi, stressing the need for the EU and its member states to explore urgently the level of resources devoted to the fight against HIV/AIDS and the need for greater international co-operation. The Taoiseach also called for consideration of how best to procure affordable treatment for AIDS for poor countries and the EU's role in supporting the search for a vaccine.
Many of the poorest countries in the world are burdened by levels of external debt which make it almost impossible for them to develop. A situation in which flows of overseas development assistance to a country are exceeded by its debt repayments is clearly not viable.
The issue of debt has attracted huge international attention. The Jubilee 2000 campaign, calling for debt cancellation, has received wide support and has been influential in securing major improvements in existing international arrangements for the provision of debt relief. In 1999 we witnessed a new international resolve to ease the heavy burden of debt in many developing countries. The G7 agreed important modifications to the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, which were subsequently agreed by the World Bank and the IMF.
The enhanced HIPCI should result in broader, deeper and more generous debt relief to the countries most heavily burdened. The qualification criteria have been relaxed and there is now a clear connection established between debt relief and poverty reduction. It is expected that over 20 heavily indebted poor countries will have qualified for debt relief by the end of this year.
The enhanced HIPCI will require funding of up to $27 billion to write off debt. There have been considerable difficulties in raising this money. In December the EU agreed a debt relief contribution of e1 billion, with e700 million going to multilateral debt relief. Ireland strongly supported this important EU contribution. Our share of the EU contribution will be over e6 million.
It was our deep concern about the effects of debt on developing countries which lay behind the comprehensive and forward-looking debt relief package approved by the Government in September 1998. Although Ireland is not a creditor state, we have allocated over £31 million for debt relief. We have also made tackling the debt issue an integral part of Ireland's overall overseas development co-operation strategy.
In addition to providing bilateral debt relief of almost £10 million to two of the priority countries for Irish Aid, Mozambique and Tanzania, £15 million has been committed to the joint World Bank-IMF Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, HIPCI, while £7 million has been allocated to the IMF's Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility, ESAF.
Ireland also contributes substantially to the aid programmes of the European Union, which is now the fifth largest donor in the world. If one includes the individual aid programmes of the member states, the EU is, in fact, by far the largest provider of development aid in the world. The programmes of the EU, while global in reach, are concentrated in Africa.
In this regard, the long-running series of Lomé agreements, which have governed trade and development relations between the European Union and countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific since the 1970s, is an example of what can be achieved. The agreements are regarded as the most ambitious and sophisticated ever negotiated.
The current Lomé Convention expires on 29 February 2000. Negotiations on its successor have been successfully concluded. The new convention should be signed in Fiji on 31 May 2000 and will run for 20 years. It is based on a partnership between the EU and the ACP states and is focused on poverty eradication.
The new convention brings the relationship between the EU and its 71 African, Caribbean and Pacific partners into the 21st century. It will revolutionise the trading relationship between the EU and its ACP partners by providing for the creation of free trade agreements between the EU and ACP regions. The agreement recognises the importance of globalisation for development and will facilitate the integration of developing countries into the world market.
Throughout the negotiations Ireland placed great emphasis on the need to deal with the marginalisation from world trade of the least developed countries. We strongly support the EU's commitment to introduce duty and quota free access to the EU market for essentially all products from LDCs by 2005. This commitment should be taken on by the other major trading powers such as the US and Japan.
The new convention will allocate e13.5 billion to the ACP states over the next seven years. Ireland's share of this, which will come from our ODA budget, will be e89 million.
The need to integrate developing countries, particularly the least developed, into the global economy is now a key issue of development. While globalisation has brought huge benefits to many countries, including Ireland, others are falling further behind. The total GNP of the least developed countries with their 600 million people is less than the collective assets of the world's three richest people. The income gap between rich and poor countries is widening as the poorest countries are not in a position to meet the challenges of globalisation. The outcome of the WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle in December 1999 clearly indicated that development issues are now central to future global trade negotiations. Issues such as implementation, market access and the transparency of the WTO's working methods are high on the agenda of the developing countries.
Ireland Aid is placing greater emphasis on the need to assist developing countries to integrate into the global economy. At Seattle, together with several other like-minded donors, we, in co-operation with the Tánaiste's Department, co-founded the Advisory Centre on WTO Law. This is a new independent body, based in Geneva, which will advise and assist developing countries, particularly the least developed, in taking legal cases at the WTO under the dispute settlement mechanism. If the world trade system is to provide benefits for all, it is essential that developing countries be in a position to avail of their rights at the WTO. The new body, to which Ireland will contribute $2.5 million over five years, will play a key role in achieving this.
Ireland Aid remains a strong supporter of the UN's role in development. We are also committed to increasing our contributions to the main UN funds and programmes such as the UN Development Programme, the UN Children's Fund and the UN Population Fund. All of these bodies are suffering from sharp falls in donor contributions and are having to cut back programmes in the poorest countries. At the same time they have introduced major management reforms designed to streamline their operations and to maximise their impact.
The aid programme includes measures to support democracy and human rights. In each of our priority country programmes, as I mentioned before, there is a strong emphasis on building and reinforcing democratic structures and on good governance. We also actively encourage measures to reinforce democratic reforms through our human rights and democratisation funding programmes in many countries worldwide. For example, in Albania and Macedonia we supported women's participation in democratic processes and in Bosnia Herzegovina we have assisted the establishment of a human rights commission. In China, we funded training of Chinese judges in human rights. We have supported human rights defenders from many different countries and human rights training programmes worldwide. We have been assisting the peace talks in Burundi and supported election monitoring in a number of countries. These are but a few examples of the many diverse projects in this area supported by Ireland Aid.
The protection of human rights is the first responsibility of all governments, yet in Europe we have seen some of the worst human rights abuses in the last decade. The former Yugoslavia has seen atrocities and barbaric acts of depravity and cruelty. This is the only area of Europe, since the end of the Second World War, for which it has been necessary to establish a UN tribunal to prosecute and punish those guilty of war crimes. The events in recent years in the former Yugoslavia are a stark reminder that after 50 years of human rights rhetoric there is much unfinished business.
Events in Kosovo in 1999, when ethnic Albanians were forced to flee their homes, is a case in point. While neighbouring countries, like Macedonia, responded most generously and gave refuge to hundreds of thousands, they were sorely pressed in trying to cope with the tide of distressed people crossing their borders. Third countries were asked by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to help. Under a humanitarian evacuation programme, co-ordinated by the UNHCR, a total of 1,031 ethnic Albanian refugees were given temporary protection in Ireland. Some 200 have since returned to Kosovo. The generosity of the Irish people, both in their wel come for the refugees and in their response to the Kosovo emergency, was tremendous. During the Kosovo crisis, Irish aid agencies received around £7 million in voluntary contributions. For every pound contributed by the Irish people, the Government matched it three times over in direct assistance to Irish and international aid agencies in the region and in our contribution to the humanitarian evacuation programme of Kosovar refugees to Ireland. Our commitment to the Balkan region also involves helping to rebuild Kosovo through the EU and UN budget programmes for the region.
The Refugee Agency, which has responsibility for co-ordinating the reception and resettlement of refugees admitted to Ireland from crisis situations, is funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs. In addition to its ongoing responsibility for the resettlement of Bosnian and Vietnamese refugees and their families in Ireland, the agency played a central role in the co-ordination, reception, accommodation and care of the Kosovar refugees in Ireland. I appreciate also the role played by other Government Departments, health boards and local authorities in the implementation of the Kosovar programme.
Ireland Aid continues to respond quickly and as effectively as possible to humanitarian emergencies, whether of sudden onset or protracted. Last year, 1999, was a particularly difficult year, which saw the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch, the crisis in the Balkans, the devastating earthquake in Turkey and the terrible events in East Timor.
However, we must not forget that there are many other humanitarian crises worldwide which are not on the nightly news, which are "out of sight and out of mind" and which also need a generous response. Many countries in Africa faced severe food shortages last year and are looking at a similar vista this year. Ireland has not forgotten these most vulnerable of people and is responding to appeals for assistance in countries such as Angola, Sudan, Somalia and Burundi. Ireland Aid is committed to implementing the highest standards of humanitarian practice. We are working with the UN agencies and the NGOs, who receive the bulk of funding, to ensure that taxpayers' money is spent efficiently and effectively and, most importantly of all, reaches those most in need.
A rehabilitation budget line enables Ireland Aid to assist the most vulnerable people in post-crisis situations to re-establish their lives and livelihoods. In many such situations it is also necessary to help Governments and/or the UN to rebuild institutions and develop human resource capacity with the aim of assisting in the creation of conditions that can lead to peaceful, just, stable and inclusive societies. East Timor and Kosovo are priorities for this type of assistance this year. Other countries which continue to receive rehabilitation support include Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia and Honduras. The majority of funding is channelled through Irish and international NGOs and through UN agencies.
Ireland Aid continues to build on the strong relationship fostered over the years with Irish NGOs. There is a fruitful funding partnership and work relationship which allows us to draw on their valuable experience for the benefit of developing countries. They in turn receive significant and growing support from Ireland Aid and APSO for their emergency, human rights and development projects in many countries worldwide from Africa to Asia to Central and Southern America. I welcome this opportunity to express admiration for their work, often under difficult and physically hazardous conditions, and a commitment to further strengthening our relations.
The Government would like to see a greater public awareness and ownership of Ireland Aid by all Irish citizens, not just the major stakeholders. The elimination of extreme poverty is a responsibility of our common humanity at a time when we are inundated with images of cruelty and mass inhumanity. All sectors have a role to play – business, trade unions, Government, the media, the churches, schools and voluntary organisations. Ireland Aid, through the National Committee for Development Education, provides support for activities, in both the formal and informal sectors, designed to raise awareness of development issues. Ireland Aid itself is also active in promoting awareness of Government action, on behalf of the Irish people, on these issues. We hope in this way that more people will come to have a deeper appreciation, and hence a greater sense of ownership, of the Ireland Aid programme and the part which Ireland is playing in international development efforts.
In the 26 years of the life of the Irish programme of development assistance to poorer countries there have been improvements in life expectancy and infant mortality rates in the regions of sub-Saharan Africa. More people have access to clean water and sanitation and more children are going to school. However, these achievements have been slight compared to what could be achieved and what has been achieved in other regions. The gap between rich and poor has widened. Per capita income in some sub-Saharan African countries is lower than it was 20 years ago.
We can be proud of what we have achieved so far and glad of the validation of that work received from our donor peers, but there is no gainsaying the scale of the problems in the developing world, the depth of poverty to be reduced and eradicated, the moral obligation we, as a wealthy nation, owe to those whose greatest challenge is survival from day to day.
