Dan Boyle (Cork South Central, Green Party)

I am grateful to Deputy Michael Higgins for ceding time to me. I feel almost guilty at interrupting his flow, because he was making all the points I wish to put on record for the Green Party.

In general, there is support for the principles behind this Bill, but there is a concern, noted by other speakers, that our responsibilities with regard to international institutions of this type have not been met by the Government reporting regularly to this House and seeking accountability for our membership of these institutions. It is unfortunate that this Bill will not be debated more widely on Committee Stage as that would allow us to include legislative mechanisms that would force the Government to do that.

The Bill has been sold on the basis of allowing the membership for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to include Mongolia, which might be taking globalisation to an absurd length. However, there is no doubt Mongolia is a developing country people here would fully agree meets the goals of our overseas development aid programme. If participation in that bank and membership of the Asian Development Bank assist that, the Green Party is in favour of our participation.

Having heard the Minister of State's speech, I have a degree of concern as to the extent to which he emphasised the trade element. While it is important to encourage trade in a fair trading environment as a mechanism for getting countries out of poverty, the policies pursued by many international institutions, in particular the IMF and the World Bank have been towards a narrow focused definition of commercial activity. This drives developing countries to see natural resources such as water and the right to housing and education as something that the private sector alone can and should provide.

This is not a philosophy many of us in the House or the country share. We should articulate a different point of view. It could be that the Celtic tiger virus has embedded itself so deeply in our psyche that we can only see international development in terms of trade and commerce. I may be wronging the Minister, but what is particularly worrying about the subtext of what he seems to suggest outside the formalities of stressing our development agenda is that it is to our economic and trading advantage that we go down this road. If that is our motivation in supporting legislation of this type and our participation in bodies of this type, we need further debate and longer consideration of the issue because that is not a direction my party or many of the people here would like to see us take.

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