Brendan Ryan (Labour)

It is since Professor Lee produced his analysis that we developed the confidence in ourselves and the willingness to take responsibility for ourselves that produced the extraordinary economic performance. It was also due to the bedrock laid by the extraordinary achievements of the 1983-7 coalition Government in sustaining education in the teeth of a mess created by Fianna Fáil which produced the skilled labour force that became the major driving force for our success in the 1990s.

Professor Lee went through a succession of our excuses for ourselves and demolished them all. On peripherality, it was clear that there were countries which were just as peripheral. On population growth it was clear that other countries had a more rapid population growth. Having gone through all these excuse he then pointed out that, in addition, most of the successful small countries of Europe had been flattened by the Second World War but had managed to deal with that and recover.

When we presided over mass emigration from this country, when we pretended to ourselves for perhaps three generations that it was inevitable, when an eminent politician and one-time Tánaiste, Brian Lenihan, suggested the country could not hold or keep on its territory the number of people that needed to live here and that emigration was a necessity, we were all wrong. This country is capable of sustaining high levels of population and high levels of prosperity like every other small country in Europe that has done so.

It was our fault as a nation that they emigrated. They did not do it freely or by choice or because they were interested in other cultures, but because the alternative was either misery at home or what they believed to be better chances abroad. For many, although not as many as some of the more optimistic commentators today would suggest, it was a question of better opportunities abroad. What we now know and what we have known for some time, and which was crystallised for many of us in December by a television programme, is that there is also a significant number for whom opportunities abroad, if they existed, were minor, peripheral and left them with no great security in life. There is empirical evidence that the proportion of Irish people in psychiatric hospitals, in prison, and homeless on the streets of the United Kingdom is considerably greater than the proportion in the population at large. A good number of our older fellow Irish people have fallen through whatever nets existed. I presume that was the reason the task force was set up.

Having read the report of the task force, it is calm, dispassionate and focused. Its members are happy to acknowledge gaps in information. To its credit, it made specific recommendations, each one of which is worthy and important. Two, in particular, need to be emphasised. These are the two to which I wish to refer. First, there is the recommendation that a new structure be established, the agency for the Irish abroad. It goes into detail about the membership of that agency. The second major recommendation, or the one I choose to highlight, is its crystal clear conviction that to do what needed to be done for people who needed these services, a dramatic improvement in funding was required. The figure it quotes is €18 million for 2003 rising to €34 million for 2005. Those are the gross figures for many different services. For current services it makes specific recommendations. The task force considers that the support for voluntary agencies providing welfare services to the Irish abroad, which in the year in which it reported was €3.5 million, should be increased to €11 million in 2003, building to €21 million in 2005. The two specific recommendations are a dedicated agency and a specific funding revolution.

We have got €4 million this year which is less than a third of what the task force recommended. We have a unit in the Department of Foreign Affairs which will get working after the Presidency. That is extraordinary. It will be done when important things are out of the way. The generation we abandoned has to wait until important things are done. It does not have to be like that. I can understand why the Department of Foreign Affairs part of this could be stretched, but we could set up the agency that was recommended. The agency and the unit in the Department of Foreign Affairs are both recommended by the task force and are clearly identified as being different bodies with different roles. The setting up of a unit within the Department of Foreign Affairs is a recommendation of the task force but it is not a substitute for and nor will it meet the objectives of an agency.

The task force reported in 2002. Two years later we get a decision which is not to have an agency. Over a period, the Government decided there were other priorities. That is the lecture one always gets, that there are choices to be made. We all know there are choices to be made. The choice was made to ignore a recommendation from a bipartisan, totally apolitical task force set up by the Government. There was a deliberate decision to ignore the recommendation of the task force.

I was never forced to emigrate and for that I am most grateful to whoever was responsible for not forcing me to emigrate, but I did spend time abroad.

I will not speak if a conversation is going on at the same time.