Vol. 353 No. 2
Deputy De Rossa and Deputy G. Mitchell have been given permission to raise a matter on the Adjournment. Each Deputy has four minutes and the Minister has four minutes.
The subject matter is, to ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the steps he proposes to take to remedy the unsatisfactory situation whereby food is allowed to accumulate in intervention in the EC while children starve in the Third World. It concerns hunger in Ethiopia.
Because time is short I will move along. It would be a very hard-hearted person who has not been moved by recent reports which have conveyed such a vivid picture of the appalling level of suffering now being endured as a result of famine in Ethiopia. We have seen the film of children in the final stages of starvation with their swollen stomachs and faces like those of old men, and men and women stunned and defeated, drifting listlessly, broken by the extent of their want. It is hard for us to comprehend the extent of the problem now being faced in Ethiopia, particularly in the northern provinces of Tigre and Wollo. According to the Ethiopian Government and international relief agencies, up to two million people have had to leave their homes as a result of the famine, thousands are dying each day and as many as five million people face the prospect of starvation. That is more than the entire population on this island.
Deputy Wilson speaking in a debate today said that nature had been very good to Ireland, and that is so. It must be admitted that nature has been very bad to Ethiopia and has not been good to it in any recent year. There was a dreadful famine there in 1972 and again in 1974. Even at the best of times the average Ethiopian has an annual income of less than £50 and a life expectancy of less than 39 years. Poverty and hunger, I suppose, could be said accurately to be a way of death in Ethiopia, but the situation has deteriorated to such an extent that it demands immediate action by those countries, including Ireland, which, whatever their problems, are more fortunate than so many Third World countries.
There are a number of specific things I should like to ask the Government to do and the country to support. The first request I should like to make is that the Government immediately, from our own resources under our own bilateral aid programme, make a substantial amount of money available for relief. Because of the internal political problems within Ethiopia it is preferable that this money should be allocated through Irish non-governmental organisations, such as Trocaire, who are working in those parts of Ethiopia where its own government cannot reach. Secondly, I should like to ask the Government, in their capacity as President of the EC Council of Ministers, to ensure that the Community reacts immediately to this problem with a substantial donation of cash and food, particularly cereals. The Government should attempt to have EC bureaucracy by-passed because, as I understand it, it can take four or five months between the receipt of a an appeal to the EC and the delivery of food.
My third point is that the Government should ensure that there is an intensified effort under the European Development Fund to provide the backup services in terms of agricultural development, irrigation, health and so on so that the overall problems of hunger can be tackled. It is a necessity to ensure that aid is not in any way withheld for political reasons. The Government should urge all countries with major air fleets to respond to the appeal by the Ethopian Government for air transport. I should like to ask the Minister to request Aer Lingus, who often have spare capacity in winter months, to make it available to the Ethiopian relief effort.
Tonight's Question on the Adjournment relates to a motion I have tabled which has become urgent because of the situation in Ethiopia. We should be aware that this famine, the worst in 20 years, does not effect Ethiopia alone. In fact, it affects 24 countries in the sub-Saharan south Africa. We should concern ourselves with this problem because we have a responsibility to do something about it. I appeal to the Minister to take urgent action at national and European level to ensure that something is done. The fact that there is some distance between Ireland and southern Africa does not take from the fact that many children are starving. Those of us with young children should consider what it would be like if our children's stomachs bulged with hunger. It is an unbelievable problem in that country and the only thing that is putting it away from us is the question of distance. However, it is only an air flight away and we must try to sort the problem out.
We can help by transferring some surplus goods in the EC to Ethiopia but in itself that will not solve the problem. It will contribute to the immediate relief particularly if the surplus is in the form of cereals. There is a problem of a fall in foreign aid, particularly from the United States. There is also a problem in regard to foreign exchange rates and of drought. In our Programme for Government we gave commitments to pay £64 million per year but we are only paying £46 million per year. Even the commitments in the recently published national plan do not bring us to the £64 million per year. We cannot ignore our commitments to those people. If we want to see a free world where people will respect the rights of others we have to ensure that the environment is right for those people to survive. It would take 650,000 tons of grain to assist the people for one year in Ethiopia alone.
In the Western world we are continuously reneging on our commitments to countries in southern Africa. It should be said that by and large the Government's of some of those countries are military Governments and they are reneging on their responsibilities to their citizens. In many cases funds supplied for food are used for military purposes. We need to provide money for infrastructure so that people can trap water. We need to give them money so that they can store grain, a simple thing. It is our wealth that we need to send, not our surplus. I appeal to the Minister to urgently arrange for bilateral action. This requires action immediately. We need to declare tonight that the Government will send relief funds to the stricken regions. As President of the EC we should call an urgent meeting of the Council of Ministers and ask other member states to take similar action individually and as a Community. I am pleading with the Minister to decide now to give extra bilateral aid by way of emergency disaster funds to assist those people. How can we go away from here and eat or drink without meeting such a commitment? I appeal to the Minister to meet my suggestion.
On behalf of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the Minister of State who are both away, I should like to state that all Members share the concern expressed by Deputies De Rossa and Mitchell in regard to the appalling tragedy that is taking place in Ethiopia. Indeed, tragedies of a similar nature although, possibly, not on quite the same scale are taking place throughout the continent of Africa generally. That continent has suffered from an unusual drought in recent years and there is a grave shortage of food. I share the concern of the Deputies that we, blessed as we are by nature's bounty in comparison to those other countries, should be doing everything possible to contribute to the alleviation of this awful suffering, that we should be doing it out of our own resources and that we should be using our position as a member of the EC and as President of that group to encourage the maximum mobilisation of EC aid.
I should like to assure the House that we are doing everything possible in both areas. All EC countries individually are making substantial contributions to the problem in Ethiopia. The Community, as a Community, is also heavily involved. Already 19,000 tonnes of grain have been sent to Ethiopia this year and a further 25,000 tonnes of grain are being prepared for shipment in coming weeks and up to and including the Christmas period.
Is that from Ireland?
From the EC. A total of 1,800 tonnes of milk powder, allied with that 640 tonnes of butter oil — apparently the two are used together in a process to provide food — and 500 tonnes of vegetable oil will be sent from the Community to Ethiopia over the next couple of weeks and up to and after Christmas.
The EC do care and have a lot of knowledge and expertise on the accumulation of aid, transporting of it and, above all, in the distribution of aid. The logistics of assembling, transporting and distributing aid in these countries is of itself an immense problem. The logistics require a great deal of funding. In fact, it is of critical importance that a lot of the funds available for famine relief would be spent not just on food but on streamlining the logistics for distributing that food. A lot of the EC financial contribution goes in that direction. There is no point in having thousands of tonnes of grain stored at ports in Europe or, as is happening, and has happened, stored at ports in the African continent and at depots within that continent but not being distributed. That is the real tragedy, to have help so near and not get it out. A lot of the EC effort is directed towards ensuring that the aid that is available gets to the people who need it.
I should like to assure the House that I take seriously the points made by the Deputies who spoke. From our own resources we have made substantial contributions already this year. We will be making further contributions in the latter part of the year. Extra sums are being provided for our disaster aid fund. To take the point that Deputy De Rossa made, we are taking advantage of the efficiency of our non-governmental organisations and we avail of them. In particular, we avail of Christian Aid, Concern and an ad hoc group called the Third World Self Help Development Organisation, which has come together. We are funding them to assist them in their work in that area. In addition the IFA are making available grain to the value of £50,000 and the Government will be providing the logistics to get that grain sent to Ethiopia. The Minister of State, who is in Strasbourg at present, is acutely aware of the need to mobilise the EC as a Community. In fairness to the Community it must be said that he is pushing an open door as far as a response is concerned. The House can be assured that on a national basis, and from our position as President of the EC, we will do all we possibly can to alleviate this awful suffering we have seen so graphically portrayed on our television screens recently.
The Dáil adjourned at 9 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 25 October 1984.
