Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

I welcome that we have reached Report and Final Stages of the Bill and I will support its passage. I welcome Deputy Burton's amendments and join in her presentation of them, as we did on Committee Stage. On the broad areas addressed by colleagues, it is important to reflect on the backdrop to the Bill, which was introduced following the end of the Second World War. Both the Council of Europe and the Council of Europe Development Bank are facing a very different set of circumstances today from those in the late 1940s on their establishment. We have to recognise that we are facing a very changed position in our country. Throughout Europe reactionary politics are holding sway, where fortress Europe is the image that is presented and is the reality for many of those for whom the Council of Europe Development Bank Bill might address the problems and difficulties they would experience coming here and to other European countries.

The situation here has changed because we are in the post referendum period, the citizenship referendum having been adopted by the people last June. That is one of the more regrettable decisions the Irish people have taken in recent years. This does not auger well for the policies the European Council has set itself to improve community relations, encourage tolerance and guarantee the rights, including social rights, of immigrants irrespective of what category they may have attributed to them by their country of choice.

I would look with interest at the prospects of the polices being out-worked and supported through the European Council Development Bank in the coming weeks, months and years. Certainly it is a laudable pursuit, but I do not know how it will translate in real terms. The recent upsurge in racially motivated attacks and utterances indicate a tremendous need for the Council of Europe and the Council of Europe Development Bank to focus on matters in Ireland in regard to our attitudes to indigenous people on this island as well as those new brothers and sisters in our respective communities. There is much about which to be concerned. It is appropriate to appeal for a revisitation of the decision on Irish children who will not have the opportunity to enjoy equal rights of citizenship and nationality with those of us who have been able to enjoy our birthright in Ireland. There are some 11,000 children in this category. I appeal to the Minister of State and the Tánaiste, who has joined him in the House, to consider seriously the terrible anguish, suffering and pain of uncertainty that many families are experiencing throughout this jurisdiction as a consequence of their loss of the right to remain here. Moreover, they should consider the terrible vista that will present itself if this country continues to deport Irish children to other jurisdictions. How will those children, their extended families and the wider communities in which they will grow and, I hope, flourish regard this country in the future when they look back at the way Ireland, the country of their birth, closed its door on them? Such circumstances are absolutely abhorrent and a revisitation of those cases that existed prior to the June referendum is certainly required. We should extend an open and welcoming hand to these children, their parents and siblings. What better time than the month of Christmas for the Minister of State, Deputy Parlon, and his colleagues to exercise themselves in this regard instead of closing the door on and banishing to a stable elsewhere people who should be able to find an opportunity to be nurtured and nourished in this, the land of their birth?

Like my colleagues, I am deeply disappointed by the commentary of the Minister of State, Deputy Conor Lenihan, on overseas development aid. The exercise of criticising the aid agencies' use of ODA funding for advocacy is incredible. In other words, he is criticising the aid organisations' use of funding in raising awareness of the needs of the Third World and the need for justice and human rights universally. I strongly reject his commentary and feel it was totally inappropriate. However, it was coming on the tail of the Government's significant indication of its intent not to proceed with what was a clear promise, made a number of years ago, to ensure that we would reach the target of allocating 0.7% of gross national product, GNP, for overseas development aid by 2007.

The budget has yet to be presented but it is not too late to ensure, over the week remaining before its presentation on 1 December, that a change of heart be brought to bear on this issue and that we have a restoration in that budget of the proposed annual increases to 2007, thereby realising a commitment that I understood had the support of all political opinion in this House. Clearly, the commitment no longer has such support. Let me conclude with the words of Hans Zomer, spokesperson of Dóchas, the umbrella group of 34 Irish aid agencies that has, quite understandably, reacted with great alarm and anger to the signalled intent of Government regarding overseas aid, as published in the Estimates:

It is incomprehensible that our Government has taken credit internationally for something it will not now deliver on. In a world where 1.2 billion people live on less than $1 a day and where 8,000 people die of AIDS each day, Ireland is failing to live up to its promise.

This failure brings shame on each and every one of us, which is very sad indeed. I hope that the Minister of State, Deputy Parlon, and the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, as representatives of their party, will recognise that a former Minister of State from their party was an enthusiastic exponent of the commitment regarding overseas development aid. It is regrettable that their partners in Government are now failing in this regard.

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