Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail)

I am paying tribute to Deputy Stagg. He raised the profile of the debate but many politicians and Governments have paid little more than lip service to this issue. All of us are tainted by our neglect of the Irish diaspora and I speak as someone who was fortunate enough to come home and eke out a living.

We get the impression from debates here, in the Dáil and among the general public that the Government is doing absolutely nothing for emigrants. However, I will put some facts on the record. The Government has introduced the pre-1953 pension scheme, 60% of which goes to Irish people abroad. I know how beneficial this has been from my experience in Leitrim, which probably haemorrhaged more people than any other county, particularly to England. This year €80 million will go to emigrants under this heading.

The Government has also introduced special initiatives for returning emigrants to enable them to apply for social housing without having to be resident here, despite our ongoing housing crisis. Like the poor, the housing crisis is always with us. At the time of the greatest affluence in our history we still have a housing crisis. However, the Government has committed itself to this special initiative and local authorities are implementing it in so far as they can.

The focus of the task force and its report was directed towards those Irish emigrants abroad who are particularly marginalised or at greatest risk of exclusion. It is important to state that because for the vast majority of the Irish diaspora emigration was a positive experience once they got over the trauma of leaving their home place. I was eight years in London and I enjoyed my time there. I am not saying I could not wait to get back home, as I always wanted to return, but it was a mould-breaking experience. I lived there in my formative years and I owe a great deal to my experiences in that time, not just with English people, as it was a multicultural society, but with my Irish contemporaries. We were very close and supportive of each other.

A Labour Minister, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, reoriented welfare for Irish people abroad by creating DÍON in 1983. For five years before that I was a member of its predecessor, the Committee on Welfare Services Abroad, and I was very disappointed when that committee was disbanded. A DÍON grant of over €2.5 million last year went to 57 voluntary organisations in the UK, 45 of which are under Irish management. These organisations provided advice and assistance to about 30,500 Irish people in 2002 — Irish-managed organisations dealt with 23,000 people and non-Irish organisations dealt with approximately 7,500. In addition, €150,000 was allocated to the Federation of Irish Societies for capacity building within that organisation. That body has played a pivotal role in ensuring the county associations have kept the Irish diaspora's sense of community alive by organising functions through the county associations, particularly in Britain.

Many of the organisations assisted by DÍON funds help Irish people who are homeless or badly housed, and in many cases they are also in poor health. These are organisations like Acton Homeless Concern, Cricklewood Homeless Concern, Leeds Irish Health and Homes and Rehab UK in Coventry. For example, the Rehab Irish Elders Resource Centre, Teach na hÉireann, in Coventry has been supported by DÍON since 1999 and received a grant of €30,000 last year towards the salaries of a project manager and a support worker who provided services to over 150 elderly Irish people. Support from DÍON enables Irish voluntary organisations to provide assistance and advice to many such marginalised people.

Senator Ryan will be pleased to hear that DÍON also supports the Simon Community, which works on behalf of homeless people in London. It received a grant of over €30,000 last year towards the salary of an administrator/fundraiser to work on behalf of homeless Irish people in London. In 2002 Simon assisted 236 Irish people, a quarter of its clients.

Over the past two years half of the DÍON allocation went to organisations which provide services to the elderly. One of these is the Southwark Irish Pensioners Project which has been funded by DÍON since the mid-1990s. Last year it got a DÍON grant of over €57,000 towards the salary of a community co-ordinator and two part-time outreach workers. The organisation now has 482 members, all over 60 years of age, and 97% of them are Irish. The Southwark Irish Pensioners Project operates a drop-in service and lunch club five days a week for its elderly Irish clients, some of whom are disabled and in poor health. The DÍON grant makes a very real difference to the lives of these people.

Many of the organisations DÍON funds have outreach workers who seek out and befriend elderly Irish people who are living alone or homeless and who may be in poor circumstances and health. The London Irish Centre in Camden also employs outreach workers, as does the Irish in Greenwich project, Irish Community Care Manchester, Irish Community Care Merseyside and Coventry Irish Society, to name but a few.

I put that on the record because despite the enormous obstacles and difficulties faced by the Irish diaspora both at organisational level and by victims of emigration on the ground, I do not want the message to go out from the debate that the Government does not care or is not doing enough. Of course it is not doing enough and I am the first to say so. It will never do enough for those who had to leave our shores involuntarily but there are some positive aspects to this issue, such as the broad political consensus in both Houses that there is an urgent need for the Government to do more for Irish emigrants. The Minister of State, Deputy Kitt, has commitments to Third World relief and he will bring his commitment and expertise to this area. I am sure he will have much to say.

On radio and television, I welcome RTE's initiative in taking over what was the Atlantic 252 wavelength. It is a long wave wavelength which covers two thirds of the land mass of the UK. However, I hope the Minister of State, maybe through talking to his colleague the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, tries to encourage RTE to provide more emigrant-oriented programmes on 252. At present they are replicating what is currently heard on RTE radio 1. RTE has the capacity to do this. It requires a philosophical or ideological approach as there is a need to look at more programmes oriented towards the Irish diaspora. I support the task force's recommendations in this regard.

I ask the Minister to keep in mind an initiative which has come my way. It concerns the recently celebrated symposium on EU citizenship organised by the organisation Europeans Throughout The World, known as ETTW. That organisation deals with emigrant issues, including the international diaspora. Some 35 million people in the EU are not resident in their own countries. The task force refers to the Government's input to the EU, but the ETTW could provide a way forward. One of its main recommendations is that one of the new EU commissioner posts, created under the enlargement process, would be devoted exclusively to the issues of the diaspora within the EU. This recommendation could provide the Government with a way to link in to that process so that there would be a Government initiative for helping those who have left our shores, as well as an EU initiative.