Gay Mitchell (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)

We should make development aid our first foreign policy objective and we can pursue that with credibility. Northern Ireland will always be on the agenda, as will our membership of the United Nations and the European Union. We can, however, credibly give leadership to other states in the area of overseas development aid.

I had the privilege of hearing the Commissioner for Institutional Relations and Communications Strategy, Ms Margot Wallström, explain how she planned to communicate the EU's message and the details of the constitutional treaty. I told her not to waste our time. As chairman of the task force on communicating Europe, I know what happens when one tries to get the EU's message across.

If we want people to know what the EU is all about and to influence people in this regard, we must look at what people are motivated to do. There are few people in pubs in Brussels or Dublin talking about the constitutional treaty. On the other hand, many people marched to Gleneagles because of their concern for the developing word. Our young people have goodness within them. They are not all in despair, suicidal or abusing drugs or alcohol. Even those who are in such difficulties are not beyond being given leadership in attaining greater meaning in their lives. We are elected to give them that leadership.

If the European Union is to become relevant to people's lives, we must not abdicate our leadership role to Bono and other well-meaning pop stars. Such persons have made a welcome and useful input but they come and go. We should structure this nation to give back some of the good fortune we enjoy and to commemorate our ancestors who died in terrible famine by making development aid the main priority of our foreign policy and by persuading other members of the EU to do the same.

Given that the scale of our expenditure on overseas development aid is set to increase, there is a case for laying these spending plans before the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs each year for advance approval. I notice the Chairman of that committee, Deputy Woods, is in the House. A special procedure should be put in place in regard to government-to-government aid, which should include provisions for accountability and measurement. Any proposed government-to-government aid plans, in particular, should be approved in advance by the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs.

As NGOs are largely funded by a combination of Exchequer and private contributions from the public, the Comptroller and Auditor General should be asked to place a report before the Committee of Public Accounts every two years giving his independent assessment of the effectiveness of this expenditure. There is no point in us taking money from the public and sending it to the Third World not for the benefit of the poor but to be consumed by people earning large salaries. There must be an assessment of who benefits from this money and there is no better person for this task than the Comptroller and Auditor General.

Given the amounts of money involved and to ensure the assessment is complete, NGOs in receipt of Government aid should be obliged to open their books to the Comptroller and Auditor General so that he can report to the Oireachtas matters of concern in regard to duplication of effort or poor use of resources which he believes should be brought into the public domain. When reporting to the Committee of Public Accounts, the Comptroller and Auditor General should critically examine the procedures used for, and the effect of, setting priorities for overseas aid. This type of business-like approach must be adopted in respect of the scale of funding we are committed, on behalf of the public, to spend in these regions.

I am pleased there is at last a strong commitment, on both a cross-party and social partnership basis, to meeting our responsibilities to the developing world. We must not, however, engage in a cosmetic exercise. We must put our strategy on a footing that will not only make us proud because of the support we will provide for our neighbours — a hand up rather than a hand-out — but will be something that is uplifting for the nation. Our efforts should offer leadership to young people in particular and remind them of our responsibility to give something back in view of the good fortune we have enjoyed.

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