Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

Arising from the Minister's replies to these two priority questions, how does he square what he has said with what the Taoiseach said in response to Pope Benedict's new year message? The Taoiseach said:

I welcome the commitments made in the Declaration that issued at the Doha Conference in December and note that, despite serious economic difficulties, Ireland remains on course to achieve the target of spending 0.7 per cent of GNP on Overseas Development Aid. In this time of global economic crisis, His Holiness' message is a timely reminder of the obligation that we in the developed world have to assist those in greater need.

This is the fourth cut in overseas development aid and three issues arise, which I want to put to the Minister. How can he justify the disproportionate cuts in overseas development aid? If one were to talk about a cut of 8%, which other Departments and sections suffered, €71 million would have been taken out. What was taken out was €195 million.

The second issue relates to the impact. When one considers for example the campaigns against AIDS and the health impact, while the NGOs have received an allocation of 70% of their budget, it is still unclear whether life-threatening programmes will be able to continue. Going back on solemn commitments given several times at the United Nations by previous Taoisigh, most recently by the present Taoiseach, does serious damage to Ireland's reputation. We never fell back and rationalised by comparing ourselves with the poorer performers. We always claimed a lead role and now that would appear to be sacrificed.

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