Gay Mitchell
Ceist:30 Mr. G. Mitchell asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs if he will make a statement on Third World debt, hunger and injustice; and the steps, if any, he is taking to bring justice to the Third World. [11988/99]
Priority Questions. - Third World Debt.
The burden of debt on many developing countries is an urgent challenge to the entire international community. Excessive and unsustainable debt levels have severely hindered the development prospects of many countries and this is a burden which has been disproportionately borne by the poorest. I am deeply concerned about the effects of debt. I intend that Ireland should participate fully in international measures to tackle the debt crisis.
Ireland is not a bilateral creditor of the developing countries. Our policy has always been, and will continue to be, to provide development assistance in the form of grants rather than loans. While Ireland is, therefore, not in a position to take a lead on the issue of debt cancellation, we strongly welcome those measures – either cancellation or rescheduling of debt – which have occurred. We also recognise that these measures have not proved sufficient.
Our concern about the effects of the debt crisis led the Government in September of last year to agree to a comprehensive debt relief package committing funds of over £31 million to ease the debt burden on the heavily indebted poor countries. This comprises £9.5 million committed to debt relief in two of the priority countries for Irish Aid, Mozambique and Tanzania and £22 million to be given to multilateral debt alleviation, mainly through the joint World Bank-IMF Heavily Indebted Poor Country – HIPC – Initiative. The Government also adopted a number of principles to guide our future policy on the debt situation of developing countries, intended to make the debt issue central to our future aid strategy. These principles include a commitment to strongly encourage the international community to take a generous and flexible approach to debt alleviation. Ireland will continue to use every opportunity to press for deeper debt relief so as to ease the debt burden on developing countries.
The Irish Aid programme is focused on poverty alleviation and addressing basic needs, including nutritional needs. We are strongly committed both to providing emergency food aid to those affected by natural and man-made disasters and to ensuring longer-term food security for all developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Ireland is working closely both with programme countries and with international bodies such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the World Food Programme and International Fund for Agricultural Development to combat hunger in the developing world.
While economic well-being is of course central to development, we cannot ignore the need to tackle injustice and misgovernment in the developing world. Human rights, good governance and the rule of law are all central considerations in the development process.
Additional Information
The problems of many least developed countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, remain overwhelming debt; marginalisation from global trade and financial flows; AIDS; depletion of natural resources; and the consequences of violent conflict in many countries. Ireland is committed to playing its full part in assisting least developed countries to address these challenges.
In the negotiation of a new Lomé framework between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, we are strongly supporting a strengthened framework of co-operation, including total access to EU markets for virtually all products from least developed countries to be achieved as soon as possible after 2000.
The current financing for development discussions at the UN will have an important bearing on how the international community approaches the needs of developing countries over coming years. Equally, the forthcoming WTO Millennium Round will be of decisive importance in addressing the needs of the least developed in gaining access to world markets.
Ireland has always been closely committed to promoting justice in the developing countries. Support for human rights, democratisation and governance activities is fully integrated into the development programmes of the priority countries for Irish Aid, ensuring that all aspects of human rights form an essential part of the policy dialogue with partner countries. Irish Aid also funds activities carried out by NGOs and other bodies to promote human rights and democratisation in non-priority countries. Ireland has also consistently used multilateral fora such as the Commission on Human Rights to promote justice and help build a global partnership for human rights.
The litmus test of our commitment towards the alleviation of poverty and injustice in the world in practical terms can be judged by our own ODA budget. On the basis of figures obtained from the 1998 OECD annual report for aid flows in 1997, Ireland, on the basis of its ODA to GNP ratio, ranks tenth out of 21 donors listed. On the basis of the latest figures available, Official Development Assistance – ODA – for 1999 will reach £171 million, the highest amount in the 25 years of the existence of an Irish aid programme. This amount will represent an estimated 0.33 per cent of GNP, up from 0.31 per cent in 1998. It is estimated that ODA will reach at least £186 million in the year 2000 and at least £213 million in 2001. Only seven years ago in 1992, ODA was a mere £40 million. There has, therefore, been over a four-fold increase in ODA in that seven year period and there will be in excess of a five-fold increase by 2001. No other donor country can claim such a rate of expansion in the period.
I thank the Minister of State for her reply. Will she agree that the multilateral budgeting that she has put in place is really a whitewash to make it appear that somehow we are taking seriously our objective of reaching 0.7 of 1 per cent of GNP, the European target, when that is not the case, and that the only way to take this seriously is to legislate for it and put it beyond the annual Estimates wrangle? Will the Minister of State agree it is time to do that because it is obscene that we continue to grow in wealth at the level we are growing and do not take our obligations seriously to the extent we should given the wealth we have? Does the Minister of State see merit in appointing a European debt commission to look at countries worldwide on a case by case basis where we regionally would be prepared to forgive debt in the hope that other regions might follow suit. I am not talking about forgiving debt in countries where there are dictators—
The Minister of State must conclude.
In future, the Minister and I should send in typed scripts and not bother to come to the Chamber.
I agree with the Deputy that the ODA budget is a litmus test of our commitment to development co-operation. The Deputy is aware our aid budget was the subject of some discourse earlier this year. On the basis of figures obtained from the 1998 OECD annual report for aid flows in 1997, Ireland, on the basis of its ODA to GNP ratio, ranks tenth out of 21 donors listed.
On the basis of the latest available figures, ODA for 1999 will reach £171 million, the highest amount in the 25 years of the existence of the Irish aid programme. This amount will represent an estimated 0.33 per cent of GNP, up from 0.31 per cent in 1998. It is estimated that ODA, on the basis of the new agreed multi-annual budgeting, will reach at least £186 million in 2000 and at least £213 million in 2001. Only seven years ago, in 1992, ODA was a mere £40 million. There has, therefore, been more than a fourfold increase in ODA in that seven year period, and there will be in excess of a fivefold increase by 2001. No other donor country can claim such a rate of expansion in that period. However, I would be open—
We were starting from a very low base,
The Minister of State's minute is concluded.
I understand there are four minutes for supplementary questions and answers. I would have finished if I had used my four minutes.
Does the Minister of State agree that, in the interests of transparency of expenditure in this area, a redesign of the layout of the Estimates would be beneficial? Does she agree, in particular, that religious orders and NGOs have given better belt for the buck – for want of a better term – than Government to government aid, particularly our aid of some very doubtful governments? Does she agree we should put a line in the Estimates showing the contribution made directly to religious bodies and NGOs, so that the House can monitor the money going directly to them?
Does the Minister of State agree there is merit in the European Union examining the efforts of recipient countries to attain democracy and reform their societies and, on that basis, giving such countries priority consideration for debt forgiveness over dictatorships, where people seem to get away with putting the money in their back pockets?
I agree it would be an interesting experiment to examine the extent to which our overall ODA contributions could be enhanced by adding in voluntary contributions by the public to various Irish NGOs and charities. It would be interesting to see the level of that resource, in terms of international development co-operation.
There will, however, always be a need for a bilateral programme. We provide significant resources for our NGOs and international agencies for development co-operation and humanitarian assistance. It is a very important part of capacity building in the Third World that we have long-term development partnership programmes with key priority countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa; otherwise, we would just be dumping aid in a way which is not sustainable in the long-term. Our aim is to build the capacity of these partner governments and countries so they can become responsible for their own economic development. That is a major part of our planned approach to development co-operation.
There is an international consensus that the debt alleviation measures introduced by the IMF and the World Bank have not gone deep enough and have not been as effective as they might have been. We are in agreement with recent proposals by the Canadians and Americans, and the Cologne initiative, to seek to reform those initiatives at European level.