Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this important debate. My colleague, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Dermot Ahern, and I, together with the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Deputy Coughlan, and the Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy McGuinness, have been working closely during the current Doha Development Agenda World Trade Organisation negotiations. The very fact that this WTO round of negotiations is called the Doha Development Agenda underlines the rich world's acceptance that addressing the concerns of its developing partners was a precondition for getting the negotiations started. The same perspective is needed if they are to be brought to a successful conclusion.

The World Trade Organisation is the major intergovernmental regulator of international trade. While its rules may have been more influenced by developed economies, the weight of the developing world is increasing. Developing countries are now the majority at the WTO and exercise in their own right and when working together a significant negotiating block. This was reflected at Doha when it was accepted that the overall success of the negotiations depended on a satisfactory outcome to their development component.

A key outcome of the Doha meeting was a political declaration on the relationship between the trade related intellectual property agreement and public health in developing countries. Acknowledging the serious public health crisis afflicting many developing countries, in particular, HIV-AIDS, Ministers agreed that public health concerns should override the issue of patent laws. They also agreed that the rules governing the import by developing countries of patented drugs should be relaxed sufficiently to allow them access to cheap medicines to fight diseases such as HIV-AIDS and malaria.

Ireland has an important role to play in the WTO negotiations at EU and global levels in ensuring a just and equitable outcome. Such an outcome is sought for all countries and, in particular, the least developed countries. Often these poorer countries lack the resources to fully articulate and advance their national interests in this process. It would make no sense if Ireland, while being generous in its contributions to development co-operation and placing a sharp focus on poverty reduction, failed to follow this strategy to its logical conclusion. This means striving to ensure global trade is an equally effective tool in the fight against poverty in developing countries.

Developing countries have the potential to earn from trade many times what they obtain in official development assistance. Consequently, I strongly believe they must be supported towards their fullest participation on an equal and fair basis in the global market if the millennium development goal of combating poverty is to be achieved by its target date. Ireland, with its EU partners, has implemented a number of specific measures to further develop trade with developing countries. The Cotonou partnership agreement provides for economic partnership agreements between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific, ACP, states.

EPAs, the subject of ongoing negotiations, are a new type of multilateral agreement intended to combine trade and wider development issues in a unified framework promoting regional integration. I have consistently stated the development aspects of these agreements must take priority.

Under the Everything But Arms initiative agreed by the European Union in February 2001, the least developed countries, within and outside the ACP group, have gained duty and quota free admission to the EU market for all but two products. Access is being achieved on a phased basis by 2009 for rice and sugar. This initiative was a particularly significant breakthrough for the least developed countries, as it offered free market access in areas such as agricultural and textile products in which they are most likely to be competitive. These demand side initiatives are very important. However, we also have to look at the supply side. Improved market access is needed in order that the share of developing countries in international trade can grow. Developing countries need assistance to build facilities and systems for producing, delivering and selling goods and services. They need aid for trade, namely, aid focused specifically on trade capacity building. This need has been increasingly recognised at international level in recent years.

At the WTO ministerial conference in Hong Kong in 2005 the WTO launched an aid for trade initiative and EU member states pledged to increase their collective aid for trade spending to €2 billion a year by 2010. Ireland is playing its part in these WTO and EU aid for trade initiatives. Our aid for trade support to international and local trade initiatives increased from €6.4 million in 2006 to more than €11 million in 2007. Our multilateral budget supporting the major, mainly Geneva-based, international organisations involved in trade related technical assistance has also grown. We will spend €9 million in 2008 as compared with €6 million in 2007.Last year more than €1 million was paid directly to the WTO programmes which provide technical assistance to build trade capacity in developing countries, including the WTO mission internship programme which has a positive impact in directly reinforcing developing country trade delegations at the WTO, and the WTO standards and trade development facility which assists developing countries to enhance their expertise and capacity to analyse and implement international sanitary and phyto-sanitary standards. This improves their human, animal and plant health and thus, their ability to gain and maintain market access.

Last year Irish Aid allocated €3.8 million to programmes in which the WTO is a partner, including the integrated framework. This groups the six major international agencies involved in the provision of technical assistance for developing countries for trade related purposes. The agencies are the International Monetary Fund, the International Trade Centre, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, the WTO and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. The integrated framework seeks to integrate trade with the poverty reduction strategies of least developed countries. It achieves this through the co-ordinated delivery of trade related technical assistance in response to needs identified by the least developed countries. Ireland has worked closely with fellow donors to fill identified gaps in the area of trade related capacity building. We were among the founder members of the advisory centre on WTO law which provides legal training, support and advice on WTO law and dispute settlement procedures for developing countries. We also joined the initial agreement establishing the agency for international trade information and co-operation. The agency provides valuable practical assistance for developing countries by providing information and advice on developments in the WTO. In a very practical way, it also provides temporary office space for least developed countries without representation in Geneva and gives them training in negotiation skills. This is very important.

As I mentioned, we are planning to increase our multilateral spend to €9 million this year. The money will go to mainly Geneva-based organisations delivering trade related technical assistance. As outlined by the Taoiseach at the EU-Africa summit last December, Ireland is committed to a considerable scaling up of our aid for trade related assistance targets for the African continent. We are also keen to share knowledge and experience of private sector development. In that regard, Irish Aid supports a not-for-profit organisation, TRAIDLINKS, which is connecting the African producer and the Irish supplier to ensure African products can enter the Irish market.

Returning to the WTO negotiations, there are a number of issues of particular concern to developing countries and those working towards a more just and equitable global trade system. Delivering on the development dimension of the Doha Development Agenda, DDA, will require enhanced market access for developing countries across the core areas of the negotiations in agriculture, non-agricultural market access and services. There is potential, within the context of the agriculture negotiations, for a successful outcome to support cotton producing developing countries, particularly least developed countries and net exporters. Special and differential, S and D, treatment provisions which can be included in WTO agreements to take into account the interests of least developed countries, in addition to those of developing countries, are also crucial to the success of the round from a development perspective. Developing countries are seeking more precise, effective and binding S and D provisions. Other important development aspects of the negotiations include making rules of origin more development friendly, which we support. We also want to improve the dispute settlement understanding to make it easier for developing countries to use.

Trade facilitation involves improving procedures and controls governing the movement of goods across national borders to reduce costs and burdens. In the trade facilitation negotiations the enhancement of technical assistance and capacity building for developing countries was listed as a specific goal of the negotiations exercise. Last year the WTO launched a trade facilitation national needs assessment trust fund, to which Ireland has contributed €150,000.

Developing countries have also made proposals to address their concerns regarding implementation issues arising from the Uruguay Round agreements. An example is proposals intended to give longer transitional periods to developing countries to implement their obligations, which we support. Ireland has also sought to give a strong pro-poor perspective to the Doha Development Agenda. This will continue as the negotiations intensify in Geneva in the coming weeks. Ireland remains strongly committed to the development dimension of the Doha Round.

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