Dan Neville (Limerick West, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important issue. While welcoming the recently announced debt cancellation, we must ensure that as part of the First World we would give leadership on this issue. We have given leadership in the past but, unfortunately, our name has taken a knock in recent times. I ask the Minister to reiterate the objective of reaching 0.7% of GNP in overseas development aid.

A total of 1.2 billion people live on less than $1 a day. Earlier this year I visited Ghana where I saw people in those circumstances. I met some missionaries there who after 50 years do not understand how these people survive on less than $1 a day. They were wholehearted in their tributes to them for their initiative and survival instinct in such appalling conditions. Statistics show that every day 800 million people go to bed hungry and 28,000 children die from poverty related causes. It is appalling that rich countries do not respond to the needs of the Third World. We must send a clear message that there is a moral obligation not alone in this country but in the developed world in general to ensure that basic human dignity is maintained in the Third World.

It is unacceptable that 14,000 women die each day from causes related to childbirth, 99% of them in the developing world. Some 15 million children around the world have lost one or both parents to AIDS. I visited an AIDS centre when I was in Ghana and saw at first hand the devastation caused by children being orphaned because of AIDS and children who were born with AIDS because one or both of their parents had it. We have a duty to contribute not alone financially but in every way possible towards relieving that situation.

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