Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)

I made no promises. I was very happy with the contributions and was particularly struck by Deputy Andrews's suggestion on the arms trade. Deputy Michael D. Higgins spoke about the shameful situation in that we live in a world where the arms trade garners and takes up so much human resources in terms of money spent while so little is spent on development aid generally throughout the world. Both Deputies expressed very fine sentiments in the debate.

Deputy Gregory was right and I take the opportunity to reaffirm Ireland's official position that we are happy with the G8 decision but that we are in favour of 100% debt cancellation for all heavily indebted nations. Only 18 nations will benefit from the G8 summit decision and we would like the other 20 nations to benefit as well. We would like to see debt write-off for all countries in similarly distressed situations.

Deputy Connolly made a very interesting point about aid effectiveness. As we increase the volume of overseas development aid, or official development assistance to the developing world, we must guarantee our aid is given in an efficient and timely fashion. Last March, as Minister of State representing Ireland, I was proud to promote this agenda strongly at the OECD in Paris. We are now laying down timeframes on aid effectiveness. I was one of the first in Europe to call for this particular measure and I am glad the OECD has adopted it. It has adopted a series of indicators and it will adopt more by September in a bid to be present, so to speak, at the millennium summit in New York in September. We must have a timetable for action on aid effectiveness as well because it is not only about increasing volume amounts.

I am glad to say that while in New York in the past day or two, I met Mark Malloch Brown, the head of the UNDP and chief of staff for Kofi Annan. He again paid generous tribute to the Irish aid programme for its effectiveness and what we contributed and continue to contribute on an ongoing basis. It is another signal that we are doing something right on this issue. He also made the point, which I have made in this House previously, that my senior Minister, Deputy Dermot Ahern, would not have been appointed as an envoy under the UN system to look at the reforms needed in September had we not been playing our part very generously in respect of overseas aid.

I point Deputies to the fact the Action Aid survey recently rated the Irish aid programme the best in the world in terms of the quality of the programme and the way it delivers. That reaffirms an earlier assessment by the OECD. We played a strong part in the recent European commitment to bring an extra €20 billion into play in terms of development and setting an interim target of 2010 and a final target of 2015 for the European countries. The development ministers made that absolute commitment and it was followed up at the Council of EU leaders which the Taoiseach attended. That absolute commitment was made by all 15 of the original member states.

The G8 package is welcome but I point out that we need to see the details of it. Far too often in the past what seemed to be very generous G8-style debt relief measures by the Bretton Woods institutions turned out to be far from generous when the details were considered. I urge people to be somewhat cautious about this particular announcement. We must see the details which, as far as Irish official policy is concerned, must include additionality for the countries involved. There must not be debt relief, which is given with the one hand, but with less amounts in terms of volume aid flowing from those institutions, whether IDA or otherwise.

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