I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Deputy O'Donnell, and her officials. The select committee is considering Vote 39 on International Co-operation. I call on the Minister of State to make an opening statement. This will be followed by statements by the main opposition spokesmen after which we will have a question and answer session.
Estimates for Public Services.
Vote 39 - International Co-operation (Revised).
I thank the Chairman and members of the committee for agreeing to postpone the debate on this Vote until today as there would not have been time to deal adequately with the issues yesterday. I am delighted to have this opportunity for an exchange of views on the aid programme and on its provision for the year 2000 in Vote 39. I will begin with an overview of spending plans in 2000.
The Estimates provision in 2000 is almost £138 million. This is the largest allocation ever. The year 2000 is the second of the three years for which a deal has been agreed with the Minister for Finance on aid allocations.
The net increase on the aid portion of the Vote is over £26 million and an equivalent increase is guaranteed next year. The wider picture is also positive in volume terms. Ireland's official development assistance in 2000 is estimated at over £201 million. This is almost £60 million higher than when the Government entered office, five times the 1992 figure of £40 million, and will amount to 0.31% of estimated GNP.
Notwithstanding the strong advantages of multi-annual budgeting in the aid area, the question of overall funding for the programme is still an issue. The singular record in Ireland on economic growth in recent years has not translated in the aid programme into annual financial increases sufficient to show satisfactory progress against the only criteria on allocations, the long standing UN target of 0.7% of GNP.
Members will know that I am not happy with this situation and the reasons are well known, they being the conservative estimates of GNP used for negotiation of forward estimates and the additional and negative impact of the new CSO system for calculating GNP. While the latter excuse is legitimate, that is, the new system for calculating GNP, the former, that is, our wealth, is not. To address this issue and the important and related one of aid management proposals for Government have been prepared and are under consideration at ministerial level. The intention is to map out a course to the UN target of 0.7% within a specific timeframe and to secure agreement at Government level on the resources needed to manage the additional allocations in a quality programme.
Of a total overseas development assistance - ODA - amount of £201 million for 2000, £125.5 million, or 62%, is provided directly as bilateral aid to individual developing countries. Some £69 million, or 34.5%, is provided as multilateral aid through the aid programmes of the EU, the UN and the World Bank. A further £6.3 million, or 3.1%, is accounted for as administrative support and tax deductions on private or corporate aid donations, the tax on which is passed on to NGOs.
About half the bilateral allocation is provided to six priority countries - Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique and Lesotho. The balance is spent through a special programme for emergency humanitarian assistance, rehabilitation assistance to support the recovery of countries affected by major emergencies and support for the agency for personal services overseas. It also covers assignments in developing countries by volunteers from Ireland, co-financing of projects by non-governmental organisations such as Concern, Trócaire, Christian Aid and the member organisations of the Irish Missionary Union, fellowships to enable students from developing countries to study in Ireland and development education in Ireland.
The theme common to all aspects of the Irish programme is the commitment to supporting the efforts of developing countries themselves to find their own solutions to the problem of poverty. The aim is to create collective and individual capacity to enable people to free themselves from poverty and oppression and to fulfil their potential.
The bilateral programme in the six priority countries has developed significantly over the years from humble beginnings a quarter of a century ago in Lesotho. The varied range of individual projects has evolved in all six cases into a coherent programme focused on poverty reduction and geared to needs identified in partnership with the countries themselves. The main instruments used in the bilateral programme are area based programmes where, in concert with regional authorities, a whole range of basic needs are addressed and sectorwide approaches to development - SWADS - the object of which are to ensure that foreign aid fits coherently into the policies, priorities and spending programmes of the countries concerned.
NGOs are vital collaborators with our aid endeavours. Their high reputation abroad acts as a pathfinder for government to government aid. Their profile at home promotes strong public support for overseas development assistance, which is the foundation on which the programme is built, and we greatly value this partnership with our NGOs. About 15% of the overall ODA budget, a very high figure by international standards, is channelled through our NGOs. The NGOs will always argue that they would like a larger slice of the cake in terms of resources spent on ODA.That is being considered at present in the course of the proposals being prepared for Cabinet.
Part of the collaboration with NGOs involves the provision of emergency humanitarian assistance to populations affected by emergencies. While the bulk of our ODA, approximately 95%, is allocated to long-term development assistance and while in an ideal world development would obviate the need for emergency aid, it is a distressing reality that the need for such emergency assistance persists.
Emergency humanitarian funding, for which £7 million is provided in 2000, is allocated for relief operations to alleviate the effects of natural disasters, conflict, famine and drought in developing countries. Assistance is focused on the provision of basic food, water, sanitation, shelter and health care to those vulnerable people most affected by natural and conflict related disasters throughout the world. Countries to which such aid was provided in 1999 included Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Somalia, the Sudan and Turkey.
Complementing the provision of emergency aid is another provision for rehabilitation assistance. The main objective of Ireland's programme of rehabilitation assistance is to help the most vulnerable people in a selected number of countries to re-establish their lives and livelihoods after natural or manmade disasters. This includes helping to meet basic needs for shelter, food, security and health. However, it can also involve supporting governments to address institutional and human resource problems as such a process can assist the creation of conditions that lead to peaceful, just and inclusive societies. Countries which benefited in 1999 under the rehabilitation provision were Bosnia, Cambodia, Honduras, Rwanda and Somalia.
Funding for rehabilitation projects is channelled principally through Irish and international NGOs and international agencies such as UN agencies and the International Red Cross. Support for human rights and good governance is an integral part of our aid programme and a concern for democratic principles permeates all our work in development. A special budget line to support specific democratisation initiatives has been established. The object of this human rights and democratisation scheme is to assist the development of democratic processes and institutions and the promotion and protection of human rights in developing countries outside Ireland's priority countries.
This is done mainly through support for small scale projects in a wide range of countries which contribute to training and capacity building. Particular importance is attached to the impact of these projects on awareness of human rights and democratisation issues at grass roots community level and on the capacity of communities to assert their rights and gain access to and an understanding of the processes and institutions of government. Funding is channelled through Irish and overseas NGOs and other international bodies and the allocation for 2000 is £1.5 million.
Our focus on multilateral aid is guided by the same principles. The Irish involvement at multilateral level is active and constructive. Increasing funding of multilateral programmes has increased our voice at the level of international debate. We have played an active role in the negotiations for a successor agreement to the Lomé agreement between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific states. There have been four conventions to date. Agreement on the fifth agreement was reached on all issues at the ACP-EU ministerial conference on 2 February 2000. The new agreement is due to be signed before the end of June. The convention and the successor agreement affirm the commitment of the governments involved to work together towards the achievement of the objectives of poverty eradication, sustainable development and the gradual integration of ACP countries into the world economy.
The management of the European development fund - the EDF - suffers from the same bureaucratic and political obstacles that have caused difficulties for all EU development aid activities. Although there is agreement to establish a new fund, EDF 9, previous funds remain in existence because they have not yet been fully spent. In all, there is almost €10 billion in unspent funds. These funds are not sitting in a bank waiting to be spent. They have never been called up from member states by the Commission.
The failure to commit and disperse aid funds speedily and effectively from the EDF has attracted considerable and legitimate criticism, including in the Dáil. The delay in spending under the EDF is caused by excessive bureaucracy in the Commission, complex financial controls, failure to decentralise decision making on spending to Commission offices in the field, micro-management of aid projects by the member states - for example, all projects over €2 million must be approved by members states - and the suspension of development aid to countries in breach of their obligations under the Lomé Convention.
Over the past five years, long-term development aid to Nigeria, the Congo, Togo, the Comoro Islands, Guinea Bissau, Angola, Somalia and Sierra Leone has been suspended. Suspension of aid means that funds previously approved were then frozen until conditions for its resumption were created. Frozen funds remain blocked and unspent. Thankfully, action is being taken to overcome these difficulties. The new ACP-EU Partnership Agreement streamlines the programming arrangements for aid which should lead to much more rapid delivery. Unspent balances will be rolled into the new fund, EDF 9, increasing the total to €22 billion. The Commission has committed itself to exhausting the balances by 2007. It has been agreed that €1 billion of the unspent balances will be allocated to debt relief.
The Commission has announced a major reform of its aid management system designed to overcome the bureaucratic obstacles to which I referred. At the Development Council on 18 May I expressed strong support for the reform of Community aid and insisted that this should be speedily implemented and time limited. I made the point that the reform process itself should not become part of the problem, which is frequently the case when one initiates a process of institutional reform.
Ireland's aid and support to UN development activities covers the broad range of UN activities, including poverty alleviation, human rights, assistance to refugees, democracy building and electoral reform, education and training, health, humanitarian relief, co-ordination, environmental protection, trade and enterprise promotion and international action against drugs. My Department maintains liaison with the beneficiary UN agencies, both directly and through our missions to the UN in New York, Geneva and Vienna. It is conscious of the need to ensure that they perform effectively and use the funds available to them as efficiently as possible and in the best interests of developing countries.
One way of doing so is through membership of their executive boards. We have a policy of actively seeking membership of such boards. Ireland is currently a member of the executive boards of UNDP and UNFPA, which also covers UNFM, UNV and the UNHCR. We will be a member of the boards of UNICEF for 2002-3 and UNAIDS in 2003. This enables us to make a significant input to the formulation of international development policy.
The burden of debt on developing countries imposes a serious constraint on the development of many of the world's poorest countries, specifically the 40 heavily indebted poor countries. Recent years have witnessed a new international resolve to tackle the debt problem. The HIPC Initiative was established by the World Bank and the IMF in 1996 to deal with the growing problem of multilateral debt. The Government, although not a creditor, is determined to play a full role in this area and in late 1998 it pledged £31.5 million in bilateral and multilateral debt relief.
In addition, in the wake of the disastrous floods in Mozambique, Ireland has been vocal in calling for accelerated debt relief to that country. I argued that there is a compelling case for the cancellation of all Mozambique's external debt. We have welcomed decisions by bilateral creditors, such as Britain, France and Italy, to forgive Mozambique's debt to them. We would encourage other bilateral donors to take similar action.
The Refugee Agency was established by the Government in April 1991 to co-ordinate arrangements for the reception, resettlement and integration of programme refugees in Ireland. The work of the agency has focused on three refugee groups to date - Vietnamese, Bosnians and Kosovars. The Government on 18 April approved the establishment of a new reception and integration agency, the RIA, which will amalgamate services to refugees and asylum seekers under the one agency.
The Refugee Agency in due course will be incorporated into this new agency. The agency will be independent of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Justice, Equality and Law Reform will make nominations to its board. It will also include representatives of wider groups with expertise in refugees. I welcome the views of the committee on these and related matters and I look forward to responding to members' queries.
I made the point yesterday that it was not proper or correct that this committee should have to rearrange its diary to meet this morning. There is no reason that the committee should meet and I hope this point has been communicated to the Minister of State. I note that a junior Minister did not accompany Mr. Mandelson for the meeting yesterday. I had to rearrange my diary to attend this morning; the meeting yesterday had been scheduled for some time.
We should consider at the outset what should be included in development policy. Fine Gael believes that development policy should be based on the people's values and on international values which are based on principles of justice and equality. It should also take seriously our responsibilities under international law. It should play to national strengths, competencies and historical links in the developing world. It should give priority to the poorest of the poor and to women, children and young people in particular. It should include a clear rationale for the relative emphasis on different aid priorities, whether bilateral or multilateral, and on how and why countries are chosen.
Development policy should be coherent across Departments if it is to be based on national values. It is my view that Departments should sponsor countries. For example, the Department of Health and Children could sponsor a particular country and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment could sponsor a different one. Local authorities have engineering, sewerage and water expertise and they could twin with regions in other countries and make their expertise available, in addition to the funds we make available. These values should be apparent not only in aid policy but in the relationship between this policy and other policies which affect the developing world, such as trade, justice, education, agriculture, defence and finance. They should inform our approach to EU policy.
There should be a critical public ownership of our development policy through awareness and education programmes. We need to spend more of our resources educating people about the needs of the Third World. If we did that, many people would support those of us in the Dáil who want to legislate for the 0.7% GNP contribution to which we are committed. Fine Gael believes that should be done now because if the Estimates wrangle continues, as happens in every Department, we will not reach 0.7%. The Taoiseach announced at the Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis that he had instructed the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Cowen, to introduce multi-annual financing. I thought the Minister of State told us two years ago we had multi-annual financing. I do not know what type of game playing is going on but it is important to legislate for our contribution.
Much progress has been made in the developing world. The average life expectancy increased by more than one-third between 1960 and 1990. It is now 65 years among 85% of the industrial world. That is what it was here in 1980. Due to the ending of the Cold War and the reduction of super power rivalry in the developing world, an estimated 380,000 refugees were able to return home in 1990 alone. I do not know what the figures have been since then, but significant numbers have been able to return home. Adult literacy rates throughout the developing world increased from 46% to 60% between 1970 and 1985. That indicates that development aid can work when we target it at those in need. However, much remains to be done.
According to submissions made to my party, 14 million young children and ten million older children and young adults die each year from easily and cheaply preventable diseases. I have said this in the Dáil and I will continue to say it because it needs to be emphasised. Each day 34,000 children die from easily preventable malnutrition. War and internal conflicts now affect more than 60 countries. One in every 115 people is a refugee or migrant, with more than six million refugees in sub-Saharan Africa alone. More than one billion adults cannot read or write and this affects many aspects of their daily lives, including their health, wealth and the well being of their families.
Numerically, the largest number of severely impoverished people live in south Asia which is home to approximately 30% of the world's population. Africa has approximately 16% of the world's population and half of all Africans are impoverished. Women suffer disproportionately. Some 70% of all poverty stricken people are women, followed closely by the elderly and children. The extent of poverty varies from region to region. In developing countries approximately 17 million people die each year from infectious and parasitic diseases, such as malaria, diarrhoea and tuberculosis. More than 90% of the HIV infected people live in developing countries. The total figure is 25 million. Almost 800 million people do not get enough food and approximately 500 million people are chronically malnourished.
Maternal mortality in the Third World at 350 per 100,000 births is approximately nine times higher than in OECD countries. The under five mortality rate at 100 per 1,000 live births is almost seven times higher than in industrial countries. I am sure that picture is not completely up to date; it is probably worse than that. Approximately 500 million women in the Third World will die before their fiftieth birthday.
While this is happening, not only are we not meeting our 0.7% GNP contribution but we are talking about others forgiving debt. That is easy for us to do because we have no debt to forgive. Perhaps we would have more credibility in asking others to forgive debt if we met our GNP contribution. What is even worse is that the European Union is not drawing down the €10 billion which is available because of bureaucratic and other reasons which the Minister of State outlined in a Dáil reply to me and here again this morning. Is there any greater scandal in the European Union?
Whenever there is a crisis people put their hands in their pockets, which is why the education element of the development aid programme is important. If people are educated about the extent of the problem, they will contribute generously because we are a generous people. However, if people knew that the European Union was not drawing down €10 billion while these women, men, children and elderly people are dying in such numbers and having their lives shortened so dramatically, they would be dismayed.
We talk about beef mountains. However, all the scandals in the European Union pale into insignificance against such bureaucratic mishandling. Unless we fire someone in the European Union, it will not take this problem seriously. Firing someone is a great way to concentrate minds. That is what the Minister should say at development Council meetings. Unless we start to look for someone's head in the European Union, this bureaucracy will continue. One head in the European Union would be a profitable and cost effective way of saving all those lives which are so easily lost in the developing world.
As regards development aid targets, I want to emphasise how our 0.7% GNP contribution should be met. The best way to deal with the problem is to ensure that we meet the 0.4% GNP contribution by 2002 by legislating for it and by legislating for a 0.05% GNP increase in overseas development aid for each of the years 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007, thereby meeting our 0.7% contribution in 2007. That is what I spelt out in the policy document I published on behalf of my party in April 1999.
According to the Department of Finance, GNP in 2007 is forecast to approach £85 billion. Some 0.7% of this will equate to £600 million, which is a substantial amount of money. However, 99.3% of GNP, that is, £84.4 billion, will continue to be spent at home. The money we contribute to development aid will help to bring and maintain peace in the world and to promote trade.We, therefore, have a selfish as well as a selfless motive for such aid. Given, however, that 0.7% of GNP would be such a large amount of money in 2007, it is clear that greater accountability to the Oireachtas for such expenditure would have to be an inbuilt part of strategic policy. This should be done by the Minister for Foreign Affairs and/or the Minister of State with responsibility for development aid, laying plans before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs each year in advance for approval, quite separate from the normal Estimates procedure. This would be necessary as the Estimates procedure would not include overseas development aid if the Fine Gael recommendation on legislating for this is accepted. This approval procedure should set out in detail how the Minister intends to use the resources provided by the Oireachtas over the following 12 months as well as accounting for how the previous year's budget was spent.
In recent years Irish aid has become increasingly sophisticated. At the same time, Irish aid is increasingly operating on a government to government basis, giving rise to concern on the part of voluntary bodies and non-governmental organisations. We need to be careful about this and there must be particular parliamentary sanction for it.
While I do not wish to get up anybody's nose about this - it is important to raise it in a calm and proper way - if we are heading for figures like £600 million in overseas development aid, which I believe we should be, there will have to be greater accountability, not just from the Minister of the day but also from the NGOs. Even as matters stand, the NGOs are almost entirely funded by public contributions, if not from the Exchequer then by the public directly.
I am somewhat concerned about the proliferation of agencies which advertise on radio and in newspapers every time there is a crisis. Six or seven groups advertised during a recent crisis. I know they all do very good work and I am not suggesting there is a complete overlap. However, there is a number of organisations, all of which have their own administrations and advertising.
What I am saying is that when we get to the stage of giving the sort of money I want to give to development aid, I want to see greater accountability, and not just for that but also for the other moneys the relief organisations receive, so that the Comptroller and Auditor General would have access to these funds. We are all human. While I do not want to take from the excellent work they do, which I fully support, the Comptroller and Auditor General should be empowered to see that all funds, both those raised directly from the public and those paid by the Exchequer, are spent cost effectively and are given to those who most need them and that dictators and despots do not get their hands on them. We must do this. I am not taking a sideswipe at anybody. I am saying this because I think it is a principle that needs to be adhered to and addressed.
The debt crisis is draining developing countries of desperately needed resources. The cost of servicing debt has reversed human development gains made from the 1950s onwards. Total debt owed to various creditors, including countries, multilateral bodies, such as the IMF and the World Bank, and commercial banks, has now passed the $2 trillion mark and may have even passed the $3 trillion mark. This is more than treble its level in 1980. Debt repayments amounting to over $250 million - over four times official aid received by developing countries - has been paid by them in recent years. The Minister of State pointed out last year that in Tanzania, where 40% of people die before the age of 35, debt payments are six times more than health spending. In Africa as a whole, where half of all children do not attend school, governments transfer four times more to northern creditors in debt payments than they spend on the health and education of their citizens.
Therefore, the campaign for debt relief is really vital and important. It is important that we, as parliamentarians, and the Government take a leading role in that. However, our credibility would be all the stronger if we went to countries and institutions asking them to forgive debt with our hands clean and with our commitments to the UN met. It is very hard for us to do that when we are not meeting our commitments. For a start, the European Union should seek to act as a regional organisation and see how, within the region of Europe, we might organise debt forgiveness.
Before I conclude, I want to say something about racism and xenophobia. Part of the development education budget, on which I have advocated spending more, should be used to promote greater racial tolerance and to combat xenophobia. The recent influx of refugees and asylum seekers, as well as other immigrants to Ireland, presents new challenges. Racial hatred must not be allowed take root. The Department of Foreign Affairs should co-operate with municipal leaders to take proactive steps, preferably involving Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and other religious leaders, in a joint effort to counteract racial hatred. We cannot speak with authority about human rights abroad if we allow such rights to be trampled on at home.
I want to make some contextual points first. I am afraid they have not dramatically changed, except where they have deteriorated, since I last was spokesperson on foreign affairs, a role which I am now resuming. It is interesting, listening to the Minister speak, to reflect on what I perceive as a tension between the ideological assumptions of the Department of Finance and her own instincts of the heart. However, we cannot make progress in politics on such a sentimental construction. I will ask a few questions which might help locate my thinking and everyone else's on this.
On 20 April The Irish Times reported that the Minister, Deputy McCreevy, was opposing using development funds for the reconstruction of Kosovo. This statement was made, not by a minor official but by the Minister with responsibility for development aid. It is worth reflecting on that. I will return to this point in a more general way.
There is a problem with the ideological assumptions driving certain categories of Department of Finance thinking not being submitted to sufficient debate. This is not a criticism of the Minister of State or the Minister. For example, yesterday we were debating the IDA, which is a Finance matter, and today we are debating the Estimates for overseas development aid with a different Department. It is like chasing a will-o'-the-wisp trying to find the Government's exact position on development issues. It is very difficult to pin this down. I get the impression that the lead Department, the Department of Finance, is following an old extreme neo-liberal market model and that there is some kind of assumption that the Western world, having effectively destructured much of the so-called developing world, should regularly weep at the consequences of its actions. For that reason, it is no harm to put matters into context.
Globalisation, as described by the Department of Finance, is rarely commented on by the Department of Foreign Affairs for the very good reason that if one were 1,000 miles away one could feel a speech on the ethics on globalisation coming on, but one would be too near Merrion Street if one was at home. Globalisation, as advanced by the Department of Finance, is creating new difficulties and deepening existing ones.
I will try to recover a point at which it takes off. For example, there is a kind of theology associated with all of this in which some of our more recent saints include people like Peter Sutherland and others, who are regarded as new firmaments, new things in our cosmos. Let me refer to the Uruguay Round, for example. The Minister of State might like to reflect on who were the beneficiaries. She spoke a great deal about Africa. The calculated UNDP loss in the Uruguay Round from African trade was about $3 billion. The major beneficiary was Europe followed by Asia and the United States. I could go through them all. Japan, I think, was in second place. If one takes the three great original pillars of approach towards development issues - trade, aid and debt - there is nothing to write home about on the trade side in terms of the European Union, the United States, Japan or any of the major industrial countries. The G7 countries have a disgraceful record.
People might think I am making a kind of rhetorical point but it is a very real one. The projected losses for the Uruguay Round for Africa is $3 billion. At the same time, there was a massive trade benefit for the European Union, Japan and the industrialised world. That is a fact. Therefore, we have to ask how consistent is the policy the Minister of State described in her speech. I pay tribute to her for her ethical instincts in that which are consistent with anything we are saying in relation to international trade talks.
I get the impression that the proof of what I am saying and of how bad things really are at home is our willingness to elevate people who represent the hard end of neo-liberal market thinking, irrespective of the consequences. I do not put a tooth in it. It is a banker's paradise.
In relation the other side of it, the debt side, which is very interesting in some respects, the Minister of State might get a chance in her reply to tell us how the schedule is working for the rather minimum commitments. The commitments were made and it is wrong to describe them as minimum. They were considerably better than pessimists had hoped but it is interesting to look at the delivery point. The Minister of State has honestly addressed the other issue to which I will come in relation to the EU's performance in being able to ask commitments from countries which are committed to their own development programme. In relation to the debt issue, my position and that of the Labour Party - I committed the Labour Party some time ago - is one of support for the jubilee programme.
I refer to the aid issue, to which I will come in a moment. When I look back on it and on all that has been written since I began as a spokesperson on this area more than 15 years ago, I ask what model is guiding development aid in Ireland. There is a nice piece in the Minister of State's speech which states that we are enabling people to find their own solutions to the problem of poverty. That is a very edifying remark. Unfortunately, it does not fit very well if one is in the stranglehold, as I have described, of trade deterioration - debt stranglehold in a way - and aid that is becoming more conditional from some countries, but not Ireland. For example, people contrasting the Irish overseas development aid programme with the Danish one regularly point to the high public awareness in Denmark but they sometimes may not emphasise enough the degree to which some of the Danish aid is tied, which is an important distinction to bear in mind, and I am not trying to distort facts.
The difficulty I have about the development thinking is that there is now a new fashion, which developed in the last two or three years, to say it is not really money that many of these countries need; it is a strengthened civil society. As an academic, I am very much in favour of such think. People also add on to that strategies for governance. One usually gets a kind of western paragraph about how democratic we are and how democratic they might be. Our own qualifications in relation to democratic accountability are most suspect. One could argue that there has been quite a shrinking of social provision and social protection, particularly post-Maastricht, right across the European Union. There has been a whole movement against tenure and there is a movement against pension security. In many ways, and not to put a tooth in it, my analysis, based on 25 years to 30 years as an academic as well as a politician, is that we have severely dislodged many of the democratic securities that were built up very patiently in the name of a rather unthinking and uncritical acceptance of market thinking.
I can put it more clearly - right into the heart of the Commission. In the Commission, or within the college of Commissioners, the more rabid competition driven people have completely dominated, for example, the culture Commissioner is a joke and the development Commissioner, apart from internal difficulties which usually hit the newspapers, seems to be marginalised and certainly has no clout at the ECOFIN Council, particularly the one reported in April's newspapers at which the Minister of State's colleague, the Minister for Finance, could not find it possible to extend reconstruction assistance to Kosovo.
We need to be positive about where we stand on this. The Labour Party produced the Ireland Aid Bill, 2000, committing the Labour Party to the achievement, within two years of entering Government, of the 0.7% target. That is still our policy. Let me again try to be positive about it by taking up a point made by Deputy Gay Mitchell. If one was to envisage the 0.7% UN target being met, it would possibly generate an enormous amount - £620 million. One is talking about a budget maybe three times the size of the present one. It is only proper that the planning - I think there is cross-party consensus on this - for the delivery of such in the best possible way by appropriate, accountable and transparent procedures should be well in place now.
I am not laying it at the door of this particular Minister of State. In fact, I rather like some of the ways in which she approaches it. It is a difficult position in which to be, that is, to want to do so much but to be stuck within this ideological locker room that is the Department of Finance. It is time that was finally exploded. Perhaps we might ask them - this is not the appropriate time but another time - to come in and we might pursue the consequences of their thinking on different aspects of foreign policy. It is totally unacceptable that the public, which is there and which supports the UN target and the cross-party support, would be regularly negated by such thinking.
The interesting side is that at Estimates, we are sometimes inclined to think that everything is going to be better if we just get on with it. We have to get on with it, but there are questions which we may well ask. One, which is very important and which goes out straightaway into the public arena - we have not had a sufficient debate about it and that is that globalisation has an underside that is absolutely disastrous in social terms. I could speak about it internationally but it has an underside at home as well. I refer to the high dependence, our deteriorating position on housing, social protection and the length of the working day in that we work a good hour less than we did in 1947 but we are spending five hours more travelling to work. The deterioration which is taking place on a people whose social life is constructed entirely on the basis of a speculative economy is there now because we are entering the first sets of generations where people will not be able to build a house.
Globalisation is described by people who do not understand economics or political science rather ignorantly as some kind of tarted up evolutionist nonsense. I remember when the 1958 to 1963 Princeton studies by people like Huntington and others were published. These offered a model of developed and backward countries. At that time there were rather vulgar publications, such as Stages of Economic Growth, which described economics like driving a motor car.
That modernisation model wreaked havoc culturally on the world that was developing. It moved between a simple polar contrast between developed and undeveloped on to a continuum of people who were on the road to development. It was a disaster and side by side with its disastrous assumptions was an ice-graph of the arms productions and sales of the EU and the developed world to countries to which a totally unacceptable model was being exported.
Further down the road, almost 40 years later, the writing on globalisation is being described as some kind of new revolution being driven by a fifth factor of production - information. Hence, the left would have one view on this. There are some around who are still of the left. I believe the Taoiseach has just joined them, as he announced on television. There is merit in debating what is taking place.
To put it in the perspective. If one takes the UNDP figures, what happened in the 15 year period between 1965 and 1980 was very interesting. Some 200 million people saw their income fall. Between 1970 and 1985, another 15 year period, gross national product, as recorded in the UN statistics, increased by 40%, but the number of UN defined poor increased by 17%. Between 1980 and 1993 one enters what has been described as a glorious age, yet one billion people saw their income fall.
There is a clue to understanding some of this and working out how globalisation, driven by information as the fifth factor or production, has impacted. The left would describe it as information capitalism. I am waiting for the Taoiseach to talk about that. Of the downside, that is, the poor as measured by the UN, 950 million of the poorest of the poor, 950 million of 1.2 billion, were in south-east Asia.
South-east Asia is very interesting because it had the most artificial expansion of its economies based on the large volume - several trillion dollars - of speculative capital that is at any time circulating around the globe. The economy of the region was structurally distorted. The requirements of the international institutions for its restructuring and recovery were such that there was a serious dislodging, as the Minister of State acknowledges, of education and health in particular. The ratio of health and education spending to debt repayment and servicing and to structural adjustment is what is important. As a simple example, in 1998 the monthly income of a teacher in Cambodia fell from $15 to $10 to help meet the structural adjustment requirements.
One can turn to other countries; one is mentioned in the Minster's speech. Uganda is an example. These are small isolated examples which people offer as transparent models of development which should be encouraged.
What is the Minister of State's attitude to the Tobin tax? The Chairman will be visiting the US when we can get more clarification on this. I understand that the Tobin tax, the tax on capital flows of international capital, had a brief innings in the UN until it fell foul of the Helms/Dole legislation, which had the net effect of killing the argument dead. Put bluntly, anything that interferes with international trade affects the US attitude to the UN which, in turn, affects the tax benefit of people who want to give donations, not only to the UN in general but to any of its attendant agencies. I understand there will be debate in Brussels at the end of June on the Tobin tax and I would be interested in knowing our attitude to it.
It is good that there has been as much consensus as possible throughout the Oireachtas on development issues and that we should try to move forward as much as possible. However, we should bear in mind that things are getting very much worse. Since 1980 1.6 billion people in 100 countries had a fall in income. These are 1998 UNDP figures. In 70 of the 100 countries, incomes are less than they were in 1980. At the same time, Ireland has become the third best market in Europe for luxury cars. In 43 of the countries incomes are less than they were in 1970.
There has been an increase in inequality, a greater polarisation, an expansion of poverty and an expansion of the number of people who, according to the UN figures, have fallen into the misery category. This means it is not possible to have a believable policy without meeting the test of integration. One cannot have an international market, trade and financial policy that is separable from one's aid policy. What we have unfortunately found is that the attitudes we are taking to global trade have poisoned our ability to be able to respond to even the generous impulses of the Minister of State. Her best instincts will be frustrated while we are in this ideological stanglehold. I wish her well in trying to get free, but it may require a change of Government.
I join with you, Chairman, and the other speakers in welcoming the Minister of State and her officials to the committee. I compliment the Minister of State on her work on the overseas development assistance area and on the substantial progress that has been made over the past three years since the change of Government in June 1997. I assure Deputy Michael D. Higgins that the Government will remain in office for another two years at least and that its good work will continue. The Minister of State has indicated that much more progress needs to be achieved. That is the intention of the Government.
An issue I raised at sub-committee level and with officials from the Department - I do not expect an answer here - is the provision of food aid to malnourished people in underdeveloped countries. It was raised with me by one company and my interest arose from the fact that it sourced dairy products in my constituency for one of the major dairy organisations. It complained that there has not been enough interest either by the non-governmental organisations or the Department in sourcing products here, products that have the appropriate nutritional value, suitable for people who are malnourished. I would like to see the Department and the NGOs taking a greater interest in trying to source appropriate food products in this country. I understand from that company that other companies who manufacture suitable food are of the opinion that this matter is also not taken seriously enough at European level. Perhaps the Minister of State could pursue the matter at the EU Development Council.
With regard to the writing off of the debt of the 40 heavily indebted poor countries, during the course of last year the committee met a number of organisations who were promoting the Jubilee Programme. I compliment them on their work. At the meetings I expressed my full support for the intention to have the debt written off, but I was concerned that there would be a correlating improvement in the living standards of the poorest people in those countries. Democratic regimes do not exist in them and I would like to see a guarantee or indication that the people would benefit from the write-off of the debt rather than the dictators or regime that run them.I would like some elaboration on this issue.
Will the Minister of State indicate the Government's intentions as regards reaching the ODA target of 0.7% of GNP? Within what timeframe does she hope this will be achieved?
I am interested in what attempts, if any, are being made to retrieve money which has been salted away in foreign banks by the despots who run so many of these countries, and I can understand the reluctance to give money to countries if it is being misused. Most of the aid we give is spent on projects and is not paid into those countries' bank accounts. There would be concern if it was paid into those bank accounts and was not reaching the people. Deputy Smith rightly said that we all advocate the writing off of debt but we would like to know that the benefits extend to the people and that the money they receive from the export of their produce - whether bananas from Uganda or tea or whatever - does not go into the pockets of those who govern those countries.
On the positive side I was pleased to see that our contribution to the UN for combating AIDS has been increased from £75,000 to £250,000. AIDS is the greatest curse on human kind and will be responsible for killing more people than all wars. We may be underestimating the need to concentrate on AIDS.
I understand that our ODA is at 0.31% of GNP. How has that figure grown over the past few years? The figure is based on a country's GNP at any particular time and obviously the amounts vary as the prosperity of the country increases. To what extent has this figure increased in the past three or four years? Was it 0.1% or 0.2%? The figure of 0.31% is small in relation to the prosperity Ireland now enjoys. How many UN members have reached the target of 0.7% of GNP? How many European countries have reached that figure? Much money is raised in Ireland by voluntary effort. If that money is added to that donated by the Government, how would that affect the percentage of GNP? I am not suggesting they should be grouped but the Irish people are perhaps the most generous in the world when it comes to donating aid to worthwhile causes.
When talking to World Bank personnel about the writing off of debt, I have long been concerned about the efforts made to retrieved the billions salted away in foreign banks, for example by Mobuto. Idi Amin left Uganda with billions. What effort, if any, was made to retrieve that money? This money has been given by countries throughout the world but has been misappropriated by these people and we should have a legal right to claim it.
What countries did the Minister of State visit this year? I do not want a detailed account of every country she visited but it would interesting to have a thumbnail sketch of the different countries and her overall impression.
The Minister of State said that official development assistance in 2000 is estimated at over £201 million. That is the relevant figure as it is the amount of official assistance given. It is not just the amount in the Estimate, which is a lower figure because official development assistance comprises more than just the figure in the Estimate.
I previously made the valid point to this committee, which is not taken on board because those who seem to make the rules about these things do not want to know, but how does one estimate official development assistance or development assistance generally? The Minister of State said it is not a precise figure and she has to make an estimate. The leaders in this field are the Scandinavians and the Dutch who are at or about 0.7%. They set the definitions which are purely Government aid from the Exchequer. Any privately sourced assistance in Scandinavia or Holland is negligible I would think.
On the other hand, when one considers this country's contributions, we may regret we are not able to bring the officially defined ODA figure up to a higher percentage but we exclude from it, or those who make the definitions abroad exclude from it, the very real contributions made by the Irish people. This is not just in terms of money which is continuously and generously contributed to Irish and other NGOs each year. If one is to get the full picture one must also take into account the voluntary overseas service given by thousands of Irish people which is hard to quantify but which should not be excluded when looking at a country's contribution to the Third World.
Fifty or 60 years ago Ireland was regarded as being very generous in its assistance to very underdeveloped countries, particularly in Africa. Much of that work was done by missionaries. One cannot quantify them in some UN or EU document but the generosity of their work reflected very well on this country and will do so for all time. One cannot exclude such issues as if they do not count or because certain people decide that the easiest way of making comparisons is between direct Government contributions. Will the Minister of State deal with that issue? It may not suit her case in a sense to do so but we should take this into account if we are to be fair to ourselves as a country.
Deputy Briscoe asked if we had increased our percentage contribution in recent years.I do not know the exact answer but it probably is that we have not, even though we have increased hugely our cash contribution. In percentage terms, we probably have not, as it is defined by others who have their own way of doing it for their own benefit. We probably have not increased our percentage, even though the cash contribution has increased hugely each year, as the Minister made clear in her opening statement.
It decreased in some years.
It may have decreased in some years, even though there was a large increase in the cash contribution. Thank God we are struggling with the problem of huge GNP growth and that we have to gallop in order to stand still. The Minister's difficulties are compounded by statistics issued by the CSO in the last week or so where, to my amazement, our GDP growth is calculated in the past 12 months at 11% and our GNP growth at 9.5%. Many of the people with whom we are being compared have a GNP growth of 1% or 2% and appear to be passing us out when the reality is otherwise.
I wish to comment on debt relief. I recently attended an interesting conference organised by the World Bank for parliamentarians from donor and recipient countries. I believe this conference, which took place in the Hague, was partly a PR exercise by the World Bank to soften its image. If so, it did this quite well. I think it is trying to distance itself from the IMF, which is where many of the difficulties arise. The IMF tends to apply very strict objective macro-economic criteria to countries. This is quite unreal because they have no chance of reaching them. The point was made at the conference by a representative of an organisation called EURODAD, an amalgam of European NGOs, that now that debt relief has become fashionable, we have a totally unsatisfactory position, particularly within the European Union, that a huge percentage of the ODA budget is being spent by EU member states on debt relief. Of course it achieves nothing when that happens. The so-called beneficiaries of the debt relief are actually worse off in net terms because they would not have been able to repay the debt anyway. However, they are now being deprived of the ODA in order to write off the debt they would not have been able to pay in any event.
The World Bank is the beneficiary of the IMF.
I do not know. I have figures here which show the total HIPC debt stock outstanding at the moment is mainly made up of export credits. It is predominantly the export credit element, with the exception of Japan where it is the other way round and where the ODA element is much higher, which is the bigger one. They are, by and large, guaranteed but private credits and the World Bank are not involved in them. The figures are a bit startling. However, it is easy for us in Ireland to refer to them because, happily, this country is at the very bottom of this list of baddies. The amount of Ireland's ODA budget spent on debt relief in 1998 was 0%. The reason for this is that we have no relevant debt to write off so it could not have arisen, therefore, it is easy for us to be virtuous in the matter.
At the other end of the scale, Portugal spent 78% of its ODA budget on writing off debt, Italy spent 57%, Austria spent 36% and so on. It makes one look at the whole debt relief movement of recent years in a somewhat different light when one sees the European Union approaching the matter in that way. The G7 countries, as a result of their latest initiative, have now undertaken to write off the debt genuinely by 100%. Most, if not all, of the G7 countries are in the process of doing so. It is an activity one must examine and analyse very carefully because what we are told on the surface is not necessarily the reality on the ground.
Ireland should expand beyond its six priority countries for bilateral aid. I believe the Minister of State is considering this. Since the six countries are in Africa, it would be appropriate to look elsewhere if we are to add to that list. In that respect, it seems to me that Asia, probably south-east Asia, should be the most likely target. It should be one of the smaller countries if Irish bilateral aid is to make a noticeable difference. This is why I ask the Minister of State to bear in mind a country such as Laos, which is manageable in size and whose problems are manageable, as opposed to some of the enormous countries whose problems are less manageable. Another country that might usefully be looked at, if one could monitor the use of one's aid, is North Korea. For all we know, the suffering there may be among the greatest in the world but since there is great difficult of access and monitoring, aid might end up feeding an army rather than feeding starving people. However, this aspect is worth looking at and this is the time to do so. I hope the Minister of State will be able to make an announcement on the matter fairly soon.
I will conclude by reflecting on a point made by Deputy Higgins regarding globalisation. What he said is correct, that is, that globalisation can and perhaps will be a disaster for many of the countries we are trying to aid. The alternative is to go back to some kind of protected local economy, a kind of Sinn Féinism such as we had under protectionism in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. This means being cut off from the world, looking after one's own internal needs and using tariff barriers, quotas and so on.
Regulation of capital.
Keep oneself immune from the world. We "enjoyed" that system for 30 or 40 years. Seán Lemass could not get us out of it quick enough as soon as he got the opportunity, and he was correct. In effect, this is asking a country to condemn its people to a sort of subsistence level of living. Perhaps that was the norm in many countries in the nineteenth century that were not industrially developed.
It is a dilemma because if poor and underdeveloped countries cannot keep pace with globalisation and all the changes inherent in e-commerce and so on, the gap between the rich and the poor will get even greater. It is up to organisations such as the World Bank to try to give those countries the knowledge of how things stand and where they are moving, and the encouragement to take part in developments and benefit from them. To tell them they are too poor to benefit and that the risks for them are too great is unfair. We cannot do that.
The context in which development aid must now be given was well stated at the conference by the vice-president for Europe of the World Bank, Jean Fran´ois Richard. I would like to distribute copies of his paper which puts the context very clearly. The context is different from what it was ten or 20 years ago and will change at an alarmingly fast pace. If we feel the pressure of it here, we can imagine the difficulties created for very underdeveloped countries which will be totally out of their depth in the new situation. It is worthwhile standing back and looking at the question in that context. In development aid one should not rely on precedent which has become irrelevant in this area.
There is no more appropriate place than this to discuss the budget for ODA and our inability so far to reach the UN target of 0.7%, an aspect which was common to all contributions. Two years ago we reached an agreement with the Department of Finance for a multi-annual budgetary process for overseas development assistance, or that part of it which relates to my division. That amounted to a figure of £400 million over the three year period from 1999 to 2001 and represented a significant increase in volume of about 66%. Even that guaranteed cash increase is not sufficient for us to make appropriate progress towards the UN target of 0.7%.
It is true that other countries are having similar difficulties in linking their ODA budgets to GNP. Because of our unprecendented growth over the last few years we have been chasing a fast moving target. This year I had anticipated reaching a figure of 0.34% but our budget is 0.31%, because of the change in the calculation and because our growth was such that ODA fell back as a percentage of GNP. While I accept the calculation problem is a legitimate reason, it is not morally sustainable for the Government to argue that because growth is so great we cannot give the required percentage of GNP to the poorest countries in the world. We are working on proposals which we hope to bring to Cabinet for an identifiable programme of progress towards the UN target over the coming years. It is important that we indicate that quite soon.
Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway have reached the target of 0.7% and some of those countries have exceeded it. Other countries are having difficulties and there has been a falling back in overseas development assistance from richer to poorer countries. Ireland is going against that trend in having the fastest growing ODA budget. However, it began from a very low base and because our GNP has expanded so much we must continue to link our ODA budget to our growth.
I accept the point made by Deputies Mitchell and Higgins - and there is cross-party understanding on this - that if we are to reach the figure of approximately £600 million per year a degree of management and accountability which we do not have at the moment will be needed. We are currently planning for that and factoring in those elements. In our effort to reach 0.7% the Department, which manages the budget, will have to be equipped sufficiently in terms of accountability mechanisms. The management of money on such a large scale will require a degree of change in the Department.
I agree that it could be argued that because the Irish public is inordinately generous with emergency relief and to NGOs, this money should be added to our official development assistance figure. Voluntary contributions by the public amounted to approximately £30 million in 1998, the most recent year for which figures are available. That is a measure of public support and Irish solidarity with the poorest of the world and it is very welcome. The DAC, the development committee of the OECD, has a measure which is recognised as a percentage of GNP and that committee determines what is "dacable". For example, apart from my budget there are contributions from the Departments of Finance, Agriculture, Food and Rural Development and the Environment and Local Government which are also "dacable". An initiative was taken by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment to support an advisory body for the World Trade Organisation negotiations and £1 million was given for that. Because it supported development countries in their negotiations this was also "dacable". A collection of endeavours which would not be recognised as overseas development assistance are added in.
If that £30 million of private contributions were added, what would be the percentage?
It would bring us from 0.31% to 0.32%.
Is that all?
Yes. Because our GNP is so high, it is difficult to make an impact on the percentage figure. However, we must take that into account. Whether we like it or not, this is the internationally recognised base against which civilised countries measure their ODA.
Deputy Mitchell mentioned the extent to which the Department of Foreign Affairs contributes to anti-racist endeavours. The NCDE spends some of its budget on anti-racist endeavours. The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform has established a special consultative committee which has a budget that is particularly focused on public awareness of racism and xenophobia. However, I accept the Deputy's point that the NCDE, which is the development education arm of the Department of Foreign Affairs, spends money on racism related matters.
In 1998, the NCDE approved grants to the National Youth Council of Ireland for projects involved in combating racism, clubs without racism, young refugees and asylum seekers and the youth service, youth awareness day and a billboard advertising campaign on refugees. We also supported Irish Refugee Council projects to promote better understanding between host communities and refugees. In addition, a grant was given to the refugee language and training project in Trinity College, Dublin, to assist the further distribution of its booklet, A Part of Ireland Now, containing ten refugees' stories.
The allocation to development education has been increased this year to £1.21 million. This is an increase of almost 19% over last year's amount. I am conscious of the need to enhance public ownership of overseas development assistance and particularly of our bilateral programmes. Many people do not readily identify the bilateral aspect of our ODA and link it directly to Ireland. Many members of the public identify with the NGOs more clearly than with the Government's endeavours, particularly in our priority countries.
Several Deputies mentioned the issue of debt. We were critical of the original HIPC Initiative. Only a handful of countries qualified for the debt relief and the targets set for developing countries to qualify were too stringent in our view. There was insufficient emphasis on the initiative of poverty reduction. The amount of money behind the initiative was too small to cope in any meaningful way with the problem. However, under the reformed initiative, there has been a very significant relaxation of the qualification criteria, such as the export ratio and the fiscal ratio.
Deputies asked which countries have reached their decision points under the new framework. Bolivia, Mauritania, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda have reached their decision points under the new framework, bringing total committed debt relief under the HIPC Initiative to more than US$14 billion. It is hoped that up to another 15 country cases will be considered in 2000. Most of the remainder are experiencing difficulties in meeting the qualification criteria because of civil strife. The enhanced HIPC Initiative is providing real debt relief to countries suffering unsustainable debt burdens. However, progress with the initiative has been slower than expected and there have been problems in securing funding for the initiative. We will continue to monitor closely the implementation of this initiative to ensure that it meets the real needs of the poorest countries.
I outlined earlier what Ireland has done on the debt issue. We welcomed the initiative of Jubilee 2000. It heightened awareness internationally among the citizens of Europe in particular and also the United States of the real burden which debt presents to the poorest countries. In some cases, reducing the debt to sustainable levels is not enough. Some countries are happy enough to have their debt reduced to sustainable levels to allow them to partake in the global economic community. However, in some cases, such as Mozambique which has been devastated by tragedy this year, the debt is unsustainable and should be written off in its entirety. We have argued this point at international fora.
I take Deputy Higgins's point about the need for coherence - "a joined up government" as Mr. Tony Blair calls it - in relation to the Department of Finance and the Department of Foreign Affairs in dealing with overseas development assistance. I am aware of the Deputy's point that on 20 April, the Minister for Finance argued against the allocation of ODA to the Balkans. I do not have the exact details of that but I remember hearing that many countries were protesting that so much of the development budget from Europe was going to countries which were not the least developed. There has been a gradual shift away from the least developed countries to countries which border Europe. A political request was made that funds for the Balkans should be additional and not taken from the poorest countries. That was probably part of the argument to which Deputy Higgins referred.
There was supposed to be savings in the agriculture budget.
There was a danger that the whole budget would be opened up and that would affect our national interests. Unfortunately, considerations in terms of whether Ireland would be disadvantaged have an impact regarding the positions we take at international fora.
Deputy Smith asked about the company, Nutrifil. It appears we do not tie our emergency relief aid to sourcing products in Ireland. One of the good things about our aid is that it is not tied. It is left to the organisations that we fund to source appropriate food and products in the country or region concerned. This is the policy approach taken by the Department instead of sourcing food for emergencies and other reasons in Ireland.
I was asked what countries I visited this year. I visited Ethiopia. This was a sad visit because the country is in the grip of a famine in some parts and it was on the threshold of war when I was there. It was interesting. I went there to assess the efficacy of the humanitarian effort to which we are contributing and to look at our long-term projects to which we are committed, notwithstanding the conflict that was ongoing. I understand it ceased yesterday. I met the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, the Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs and various Ministers dealing with the logistical difficulties of the distribution of food in the country at present.
From the humanitarian and political points of view, it was a most informative visit to one of Ireland's priority countries. It is a tragedy to see one of our priority countries in such difficulty. It had been progressing extremely well in terms of growth, cutting back the size of its army, etc. It was doing everything the international community wanted it to do to avail of donor generosity. Unfortunately, it found itself ensnared in this dispute and I hope there will be a full cessation of hostilities soon and that Ethiopia and Eritrea can start building up their economies again following the conflict.
I also visited Mozambique last year, but that was before the devastating flooding. I attended the EU Cairo Summit which was the first summit where all the heads of governments of European countries met the heads of governments of African countries. There was a declaration following that summit to pursue issues further, such as the moneys in foreign accounts to which Deputy Briscoe referred. It was a very wide ranging summit covering a broad range of matters, including political, humanitarian and development issues. These are all issues of governance in which the rich countries of the north tend to get bogged down unnecessarily. The recipient countries in Africa wanted to talk about development issues and debt relief rather than be lectured by the rich north about their governance. I take Deputy Higgins's point on this matter.
I understand the Tobin tax is a suggested tax on speculative international financial transfers. I think Ireland would be in favour of it, but the main question appears to be practicability and enforceability. I do not understand the point regarding expanding finance for development that the emphasis should be on practical proposals. It appears it has been stopped in any event. It has not progressed at any level. Mr. Tobin was a US Congressman, an academic.
Mr. Tobin was the Nobel Laureate in economics. However, it has not stopped in Europe. There was a debate at the end of June in Brussels about its implementation. It was blocked simply because of the Helms/Dole legislation which, bluntly, is an outrageous attack on the United Nations. I am glad Ireland supports it.
I was not aware of this.
It is the third option for the Chairman in relation to regulating international capital and speculative flows.
The fourth option was the type that used to emanate from Moscow. However, that is now gone.
We are back in the 18th century now.
The Chairman mentioned a new priority country. One of the proposals we are considering in terms of the management of our expanding aid budget is to have another priority country. We were looking at Asia and at changing our current focus on sub-Saharan Africa and the least developed countries in Africa to a more developed country which is not as poor and which would enable us to have a different mix of aid that would bring different experiences to bear. However, because two of our priority countries, Ethiopia and Mozambique, have been devastated by tragedies, we might be better to focus on their rehabilitation and reconstruction for a year rather than seeking to expand to another continent given that they are only recovering and will need a lot of assistance from us in the coming years.
Another new undertaking is that we have opened an aid office in East Timor which will draw a lot of resources from our budget in the coming years. These are the type of issues we are debating at political level and which the Minister and I are discussing so we can go to the Government with clear proposals not just on significant increases each year to reach the UN target in an agreed time but also on broader issues of policy, such as a new priority country.
We are also considering a more significant funding of NGOs in our development endeavours. NGOs currently use approximately 15% of our overall budget. That has been at a similar level for many years. They have made the argument that they are in a position, in partnership with us, to deliver accountable and practical assistance to the poorest of the world. There would be strong popular support in Ireland for deepening our partnership with the NGOs. That is another aspect of policy we are considering.
I am glad there is cross-party support for increasing our budget to reach the target and also an understanding of the complementary need for greater accountability, management and planning. I hope I have covered all the Deputies questions.
As regards the Vote, why has the emergency humanitarian assistance been reduced from £12 million to £7 million? Why was there an increase from £190,000 to £301,000 in one year in the contribution to the UN Commissioner for Human Rights?
There was a supplementary budget of £6 million for Kosovo which boosted the emergency assistance last year compared to this year. Unfortunately, life throws up terrible tragedies and we must frequently seek a Supplementary Estimate.
Why was there a significant increase in one year in the contribution to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights?
We have been supportive of Mrs. Robinson's office since she was appointed. She did not disguise the fact that when she was appointed her office was poorly equipped. Ireland decided to significantly increase our support for the initiatives her office was promoting. We are significant donors to UNICEF, UNDP, UNHCR and the office of the Commissioner.
Given some of the recent utterances from Mrs. Robinson's office, we may need to have a closer look at the money we give to it to ensure it is being used for proper human rights activities.
Perhaps the Minister of State could clarify the status of the hydrology course at the National University of Ireland, Galway. This course has the largest number of people from Asia and Africa and there are two levels of training; one is in flood forecasting and the other is a technical course on administration. Is its funding secure?
As I understand it, this is the final year of Government support for that course. It has been supported for approximately 20 years.
Can I speak on this issue?
The Deputy must be brief. Has this anything to do with Vote 39?
Yes, because it was under this Vote. Professor Eamon Nash and Professor Dooge are two internationally distinguished professors on hydrology and are known all over the world. Professor Nash initiated this course, but he died earlier this year. It had the largest number of international participants in any course in Ireland. It drew people from China, which resulted in the first Ph.D. in hydrology ever awarded. Many other people took masters degrees. Chief technical people took technical courses at a second level on computer forecasting of floods. It also attracted people from Latin America and Africa.
The Department of Foreign Affairs had a point when it stated that this course should be taken over by the Department of Education and Science. However, it did not put take-over mechanisms in place. It would be an absolute disaster if the course was not continued at this time. It did more for inter-cultural relations than any other course I know. It also produced excellent results. Funding from another source should be guaranteed before we take a decision to stop funding it. The funding for the course is in the Estimate. I will support the Estimate on the understanding that the funding for this course will continue.
A comprehensive review of this course was undertaken in 1997. Following that review, it was agreed between the Department and NUI, Galway, that there should be a final cycle of Ireland aid funding for the programme amounting to just under £1 million in the period 1998 to 2000. On the basis that there would be no further Ireland aid funding after 2000, NUI, Galway, undertook to take steps to secure other sources of funding for the programme. Deputy Higgins is saying it has not managed to do that.
Yes. I am also saying it is important to know it is not its decision. If it does not want to run that course, I can think of other people who would be delighted to do so. It should be run as it is an advanced course. Water is the most important thing on the planet. It is a disgrace that it would be willing to agree to that. I presume there was a gun put to its head and it was told it could continue to 2000 provided it agreed to wind it up then. That course was the best the university had. If it lets it go, it should be ashamed of itself.
As I understand it, there was an agreement for it to be phased out in 2000. It has been funded for 20 years.
There is nothing wrong with that.
The policy is that we should support a project for a limited number of years and then we should be allowed after a 20 year period to support another project. I have not received any representations on this matter.
I will write to the Minister of State.
I will be interested to read the Deputy's letter.