Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the preparations for the forthcoming World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong. While Kofi Annan is hoping for a significant change in how these matters are discussed, a significant change is inevitably not taking place in the House's discussions. The House will always discuss development on a Thursday when most Members have returned home and through statements rather than a motion upon which we could vote. To some Members who have spoken on this issue for years, these circumstances are inevitably disappointing. It is a matter that should be discussed in a prime spot of the House's Business, either on a Tuesday or Wednesday.

We have heard three presentations which, as one expects, dealt with industry, trade and commerce, development issues and agricultural issues, respectively. Am I confident, having listened to the three speeches, that we are going with one concentrated and integrated voice to the WTO talks in Hong Kong? I am afraid I am not. There is less evidence of an integrated approach in any suggestion that we might have adopted a development-led approach to the Hong Kong talks.

The ten minutes allocated do not allow me to go into much detail on the circumstances surrounding the resumed talks in Hong Kong. However, if the concentration on agriculture continues in the preparatory talks, it is difficult to see how significant progress will be made on the non-agricultural areas, traded commodities and services and the process of the WTO talks. This leads one to believe that, having had conflict between the EU and the US positions on agriculture, Hong Kong will conclude with even less than the Cancun talks.

In the Uruguay round, the preceding one from which the process is drawn, the poorest people in the world paid a heavy price. The main beneficiaries were countries with strong economies such as Japan, the EU and the US. After Uruguay, there was an agreement that never again would we rob the poor to facilitate the rich. It was significant that the Doha talks were announced as a development round. However, what evidence is there that it remains that?

Is there anything in what we heard from the Government to suggest the world millennium development goals or the elimination of world poverty will be the starting point of the talks? Are the negotiations to be world poverty-proofed or tested against the eighth millennium goal which does not have a timescale and is not specific on a fair and just international traded system? There is no evidence that a changed trade atmosphere with the removal of every obstacle, even if it gave economic growth, leads to a democratic improvement in incomes spread across societies.

I hope there is some conversion in our position between now and the talks in Hong Kong. I will outline the principles that will give us integration in our approach to the talks and the prospect of development aims being given first place. The history of the states from the northern hemisphere that will participate in the Hong Kong talks shows they all have had a Keynesian moment in economic development, such as in Europe during its post-Second World War reconstruction. This allowed the use of supplied money and the mechanisms of state intervention and government initiatives to make the economy tick and expand. The northern hemisphere states always insist the southern hemisphere countries must not be allowed a Keynesian moment in their economic development. This is markedly unjust.

To demand reciprocity as a principle of trade talks from countries, significantly poorer than rich and developed countries is monstrous, immoral and indefensible. It is true that there is a crying need to address rural development and restructure Irish agriculture, re-integrating it into a proper rural development model. However, the debate creates a false collision between the adjustment needed in Irish rural society and in some of the poorest countries in the world. If rural survival is an issue in Ireland, what about those countries seeking to have certain commodities governed by way of exception which are important to food security, rural development and the basic right of an economy to take its first steps towards development? These arise with special products and special protective measures that need to be taken by economies at the early stages of development. How will this be fed into the debate?

The WTO has not radically changed its processes in transparency, consultation or preparation for the talks. We face a WTO that seems to regard diversity of opinion and conditions that exist in countries in the south as some type of obstacle.

The Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Michael Ahern, stated:

Ireland supports an ambitious approach in requesting service sector liberalisation across the full range of internationally traded services sectors, including construction and related engineering, financial services and professional business and distribution services, to name but a few.

He continued to suggest there was nothing in this aspiration which will endanger the right of countries in Africa and Asia to develop their own essential public services. Separate from the WTO, further conditions are imposed by the IMF and the World Bank on developing economies. It is outrageous for multinational corporations to suggest they have the right of monopoly on the supply of clean water, the right to purchase land, the right to provide private health care and the right to regard education as the next best thing in Africa. This is the true story for services in Africa and Asia. There is no point in dancing around this fact. We must accept the rights of these countries to be secure in food supply, to be able to protect commodities necessary for the development of an infant state economy and to be able to defend their own integrity in pursuit of the democratic supply of essential basic services.

I will not take from the enthusiasm and commitment of the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Conor Lenihan, when he speaks of the importance of Ireland assisting with €1 million for the UNCTAD process to enable poorer countries to have the capacity to become involved in negotiation. However, I do not see any evidence of the three Ministers of State involved agreeing that the lead conditions in the talks will be development ones and that Ireland's position will be adjusted to these in the interest of the elimination world poverty. There has been a suggestion, even by some non-governmental organisations, to allow the new trade regime to fall out so that we can all feel ethical about the consequences. The crux is whether development issues are to be regarded simply as a residuum of a trade round or will they be regarded as the condition on which the trade talks will open? The evidence does not suggest the latter. However, we have some time yet to change the minds of the Government and the EU.

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