Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister of State on his appointment and wish him well in his future role in the Department. It is an interesting Department and many challenges will emerge on a daily and weekly basis, including emergencies.

I agree with the remarks made by previous speakers on the need to ensure aid reaches the people for whom it is intended. We must ensure that nobody along the way decides to cream off a piece, an edge or a corner of the funding for his or her own benefit. In fact it is required that this committee, and I am only a passing member today, takes control of this issue. In so far as is possible, the committee must visit the various locations, meet local politicians and be clear in its understanding of what must be done. The committee may well be criticised by the media for travelling abroad. The fact is that ODA is an important area of investment and, therefore, it is important that we ensure that the money is put to the right use.

Aid for trade has been referred to already by Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan. We need to be very careful that we do not find ourselves indirectly aiding commercial enterprises in other countries. We give aid without strings attached but not every country does so. I strongly urge that a careful assessment be carried out on countries involved in aid for trade. We must find out whether we will become disadvantaged by their activities.

Like Deputy Darragh O'Brien, I wish to mention the important issues of refugees and Turkey. It is true that Turkey has had an ongoing problem with human rights but that country's standards relating to and recognition of human rights are not the same as ours. There is a vast difference and that has always been the case. Unfortunately, throughout the European Union there has been an inexorable move away from Turkey and a tendency to wrongly blame it for things. Ireland used to be quite supportive of Turkey and encouraged it to comply with the acquis communautaireand to join the European Union. In recent years, Turkey has moved away from Europe and now has fewer friends in the so-called free world, which is not good. Recently, I watched a television programme in which a woman went into great detail to explain that the people like her, who are liberal minded and progressive, are becoming more isolated by virtue of the fact that Turkey appears to have been isolated by the free thinking global community. I have concerns about such a situation. Previously, Turkey had a natural tendency to move towards Europe and aspired to the same standards that we regard as being a normal part of a modern society. I think Europe is going in the opposite direction now.

My point is about the extent to which we tend to see the European Union, and the United Nations as well, as having failed in terms of the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East. The EU, as an entity, seems to be getting the blame but it was not the EU that caused the problems; it was the individual member states across the European Union and others across the globe. There was no compulsion on anybody to do anything other than respond in a favourable fashion to the crisis as it arose. It was not a great advertisement for freedom-loving global communities to see children falling off boats and their bodies being picked up on beaches or to see the old emblem of razor wire as the greeting for children, their mothers and other adults who were refugees and who walked more than 100 miles to get to a place of safety. As a global community we did not cover ourselves in glory and we stand convicted of negligence and failure to respond or do anything in a situation as catastrophic as the one that has prevailed in the past two and a half to three years.

When I was a young person, I read about Nazism, the failure of various countries to recognise what was happening long before it came to pass and the appalling cruelty that was visited on the European community and, eventually, the global community. I am greatly worried about the consequences of the type of scenes we have seen on our television screens in the past two and a half to three years. If we, as a global community, try to divest ourselves of any responsibility for those events, we are wrong. We are deluding ourselves. Oscar Wilde said duty is what we expect of others but not necessarily of ourselves. That duty must fall to each and every person. In the near future, a recognition has to dawn that every freedom-loving person in Europe and across the globe has a responsibility to respond in some fashion. We are having a debate across Europe on what is called immigration, which is a nice word but that is all it is, but unless the European community and the global community come to grips with recognising that we have responsibilities and freedom, and that we can respond in a much more favourable fashion than we have done in the past, we will be condemned in the future and we may suffer the consequences of what happens when we neglect that area. I am sorry for going on about that.