Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

A ministerial statement said that to put the scale of activity in the housing market in perspective, almost one third of the country's housing stock will have been built in the ten year period 1997 to 2004. My only criticism of that statement is that 1997 to 2004 is not ten years but local authority housing is up by 10%.

I am strongly committed to overseas development aid funding, as no doubt is the Minister. That is to increase by €60 million and then by two further tranches of €65 million. It has been an ongoing problem to meet the target for overseas development aid funding, especially in periods of high growth. In his autobiography Garret FitzGerald refers to his introduction of the bilateral aid programme adding that in 1973 the Government decided to raise overseas development aid by 0.05% per year. He then explains that unfortunately because of various economic circumstances it was not possible to do that. I then looked at facts about Ireland in 1995 when Deputy Burton had responsibility for overseas development aid. The official book published by the Department of Foreign Affairs at the time stated that total expenditure in 1995 was expected to amount to IR£89 million, approximately €114 million. Next year it will reach €535 million, which is a four-fold increase in real terms. It is true that Ireland, along with 21 of the 24 OECD countries, has not yet fulfilled the 0.7% pledge. All Governments have been over-optimistic about how quickly this can be done. We are in a double bind because if the economy goes flat there is much pressure on resources and it is difficult to increase the aid, even though it would be easy to do so in terms of GNP. When the economy is growing by 5% to 10% there will be a substantial real increase in inflation in ODA spending, but it will be very difficult to achieve an increase in such spending as a percentage of GNP. Deputy Burton had this difficulty between 1995-97. The Government has not abandoned its pledge to commit 0.7% of GNP to overseas development aid. I hope that we will achieve this as soon as practicable. If it is at all possible in light of the budgetary figures, I appeal to the Minister to do a little bit more next year. I am glad we are back to a three-year allocation, as the development assistance committee of the OECD recommended.

I look forward to the budget, the Finance Bill and the rest of the budgetary process, all of which will help strengthen our economy and push it forward.