Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 13 November 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade

Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals

2:50 pm

Photo of Eric ByrneEric Byrne (Dublin South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Dr. O'Neill and his team along with the political establishment of the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Gilmore, and the Taoiseach for carrying out phenomenal work on behalf of those suffering from hunger and deprivation. Notwithstanding our small population of 4.5 million to 5 million, it makes us extremely proud to know that we are now recognised widely throughout the world as one of the leading countries engaged in the process of looking comprehensively at the world, its problems and their causes, and presumably solutions to why so many are living in poverty, so many babies are dying prematurely and so many people are undernourished. I am very conscious that we have a programme running jointly with the United States on nutrition for children.

After taking the credit for doing phenomenal work, I wish to move to some of the hard facts confronting the committee and us all as citizens of the world. I congratulate the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on organising with the former President, Mrs. Mary Robinson, an event in Dublin Castle. That event gave those who attended an insight into the grassroots throughout the world who felt they had no voice. They were now facilitated for the first time with a voice and need the world to know of their predicament in their relative locations. For example, the pastoralists of the Maasai were present and outlined the complication of their lives owing to land ownership. The pastoralists desire to move around and restrictions are being placed on them. There were people from tiny villages in Nepal and isolated fishermen and fisherwomen from Lake Victoria in the Great Lakes area. For the first time politicians in the First World were listening to the voices of really interesting people from diverse regions who wanted their voices heard. In the development of the framework I hope we will pay due consideration to their voices.

This brings me to the kernel of the debate. I congratulate the collective world on implementing those millennium goals which it has implemented to date. We have been successful in three areas and we may have failed in another three areas. However, in some areas we have succeeded in halving the extreme poverty rates in the world, halving the proportion of people without access to clean water - no mean task - and significantly improving the lives of at least 100 slum-dwellers. However, we have not yet managed - the programme is to run to 2015 - to achieve the targets set on maternal health, access to sanitation and reducing hunger. They apparently remain well off track. We will be reviewing our strategy after the end of the 2015 goals.

Ireland has experience of empowering people or capacity building as a means of providing aid to countries. Does Dr. O'Neill believe capacity building is one of the most important areas in the provision of aid? The Gulu region of Uganda has come out of a terrible war, with experience of child soldiers, impoverishment and hunger. Ireland was supporting the redevelopment and integration of the people of that region. Within the Ugandan Government the President's office was discovered to have been defrauding this country's aid to the tune of €3 million and aid from Denmark and Sweden. A total of €12 million was being diverted by a sophisticated scam thereby depriving the people we are targeting of aid in vitally needed resources. However, I understand that Irish Aid had actually empowered the comptroller and auditor general's people, who then discovered the president's men were engaged in diverting our €3 million. We immediately stopped and we got the money back.

This is a classic example that shows if we provide strategic aid through capacity building it is possible to achieve so much more than just responding to the hunger pangs of malnourished children.

This is linked to the question, which has been touched on, of empowering these countries to have a proper taxation system to prevent the drain on their public finances by the flow of the illicit proceeds of crime, tax evasion and corruption, which fundamentally undermine the work of the MDGs and the countries providing development aid. Does Dr. O'Neill agree it does not sound as humanitarian as responding to an immediate crisis such as an earthquake, flood or tsunami but if we could provide services to weak governments to reform their taxation systems, for example, to strengthen their tax administration and implement policy, that would prevent corruption? It is a hugely complex issue to consider the world in general and impoverished regions in particular and to come up with a set of proposals but I am happy having read the Commission's report and given the involvement of the Government along with our dear friends from Norway and Denmark that we have something to say.

If we can copperfasten human rights as the fundamental issue when providing development aid and support policies for these governments and it is enshrined in the master plan of the UN, NGOs would be empowered on the ground, although it might not necessarily resolve everything overnight. I wish the officials the best with their work.

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