Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)

I ask the Government, and particularly the Minister for Foreign Affairs, to treat with the highest respect and dignity the emigrants who sailed broken-hearted from Ireland in the dark years of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. When the Estimates are published on Thursday, I demand that a clear and unambiguous message of support be sent from the emerald isle to the thousands of emigrants in the UK, the US, Australia and elsewhere. Such people should be assured that the beneficiaries of the Celtic tiger do not and will not forget where they and we came from.

In a country where materialism is rampant, it is vital that every generation take stock of its history, its commitment to the outside world and its responsibilities to its people — our brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts, most of whom were forced to emigrate to places around the world that were in most cases hostile to anyone calling themselves Irish. Over the past 50 years since the mass exodus of our finest young people we have behaved miserably when it comes to shouldering responsibility for their welfare. There are many lonely, broken-hearted elderly people living in little bedsits no bigger than a horse box in London, Birmingham, Manchester and many other places, and they often wonder what their Irish nationality has meant for them.

In the US, there are vast numbers of decent, respectable, law-abiding young people who dread the knock on their door in case the police are seeking out persons without official visas and other documentation required for them to be there. Stories abound of such people being unable to return to Ireland to attend their parents' funerals or the weddings of family members, scared that they may not be allowed back into the United States.

Many of those to whom I have referred sent money home to help their families in this country when we were down in the dumps. Their remittances were taken into account when budgets were put together in the 1940s and 1950s. Now it is our turn to help the needy and impoverished Irish, irrespective of where they are abroad. In the highly acclaimed task force report, Ireland and the Irish Abroad, published in August 2002, many worthwhile proposals were made to help our emigrants. This year alone, the allocation to Díon, the organisation that distributes aid to Irish emigrants in Britain, was approximately €4 million, certainly much more than we spent on them in previous years. However, it is far from the proposals contained in the report. The task force recommended that €18 million be spent in 2003, rising to €34 million in 2005.

I welcome the dedicated unit in the Department of Foreign Affairs, which is a good development. Everything humanly possible should be done to help the 57 Irish groups working among our kith and kin in Great Britain, those through whom funding is channelled. I do not have time in the five minutes at my disposal to discuss some very important matters contained in the task force report that I would like to see implemented, one of which is the question of bringing people back from the UK and America for holidays in Ireland. I do not have enough time to develop why, for a variety of reasons, that would be very important psychologically. We should tease that out. Many communities in Ireland that have shown such great civic spirit in recent years should be involved, and I hope that the Government will do everything it can to assist in that regard.

This is not all one-way traffic since there is also a bridge to be erected to our many successful emigrants who are of immense use to Ireland commercially. The success of the Irish abroad in the early years contributed to the building of a better Ireland at home, and we should never forget that.

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