Peter Power (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy has mentioned corruption, which I must refute. Our overseas development assistance budget is peer reviewed internationally by the OECD. It is recognised as being of the highest quality and one of the most effective in the world. That characterisation of the budget is wrong. I will not spend more time on that, but I accept that in very difficult economic times it is very understandable that the public will be looking at all budgets and asking questions. That is why we need to maintain full public confidence in the programme.

I do not accept that ambiguity is setting in. If anything, we are being more definite about our ambitions. We want to achieve our ambitions, but we want to ensure that they are real, practical and realisable. There is no point in having false ambitions based on a foundation of sand. The ambitions must be clear, as the Taoiseach reiterated in September last year before the United Nations. We must say with conviction that we have to provide our programme based upon the reality of strong economic growth. If we continue to borrow, as we are doing, for development purposes, that is ultimately unsustainable and we preach sustainability in our aid programme throughout the world. However, to borrow continuously and to repay borrowing for development purposes is an unsustainable position.

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