Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)

I thank Senator Feighan for his kind closing comments. I hope I have been up-front in the brief to date, although I may have been too up-front in the early period. However, it was important to state that we would not achieve the target rather than deceiving the public by stating it would be achieved and then not doing so, resulting in an enormous chasm of confidence in the political system as it spins its way towards pretending it is reaching targets which cannot be met based on the figures.

I welcome the motion and the opportunity to contribute to the debate. This is my most comprehensive statement to date since becoming Minister of State on overseas development and how we should proceed. There is a need for a more informed debate on development topics in Ireland and I welcome the increased number of visits by Members of both Houses to the developing world to witness at first hand circumstances on the ground. Such journeys are not junkets, as often depicted by the media, but are difficult and distressing visits. I urge Members to continue to travel to such countries.

I was greatly surprised when I took up office at the depth of understanding of development issues among Members of both Houses and I was also pleasantly surprised when I attended a recent ODA meeting to find 20 or 30 Members of both Houses present. They were present not because I was attending but because they are interested in development aid. That reflects well on our parliamentary system because for years ODA has been a minority interest.

My ambition is to widen and deepen public understanding of the Government's sustained commitment to assisting the poorest people in the poorest countries in the world. People need to be educated about the size of the Government's programme and public involvement, understanding and ownership of the programme, which is the largest in the history of the State, must be enhanced.

I would like to outline a number of key elements of the ODA issue and the Government's overall commitment to development assistance. The Government's official development assistance programme is more than 30 years old. I reaffirm Ireland's commitment to address the needs of the poorest people in the world, to making progress towards the millennium development goals and to reaching the United Nations target of 0.7% of GNP. Since the target was first agreed at the General Assembly in 1970 it has proved difficult for many countries to reach. To date only five countries have managed to reach or exceed the target.

In this context the issue of how best to meet the UN target, and in what timeframe, is under review. Hopefully, decisions will be made in the next few months regarding how a legitimate, realistic, practical and phased approach can be adopted to achieve the target. However, both the volume and percentage of GNP increases in recent years in our ODA programme have been substantial, sustained and without parallel in other OECD member states. This year €545 million will be spent on development assistance, which is more than a threefold increase on 1997, when the total budget allocation for ODA was €158 million. The allocation will be more than 0.4% of GNP in 2005. Ireland, on account of these unprecedented aid funding increases over the past ten years, is the world's eighth largest aid donor on a per capita basis and it lies well above the EU average of 0.36% of GNP.

Recently, the Department held a small function to thank the diplomats who gave so willingly of their time over the Christmas period to respond to the tsunami crisis. Ireland has consistently punched above its weight in diplomatic and global terms, whether through our stewardship of the Security Council or the EU Presidency. This applies not only to the current Government but also to Governments headed by former Taoisigh John Bruton and Garret FitzGerald. They also led successful Presidencies of the EU.

Ireland needs to continue to punch above its weight and our approach and commitment to ODA reflects this approach. While Ireland is the eighth largest contributor in the world, richer countries such as Japan and the US spend much less on ODA. Ireland must maintain its position because that guarantees influence and respect and that is what the people expect in a moral sense. As a country that experienced and was the victim of a most atrocious famine and which carries that legacy deep in its heart, ethos and outlook, that is what the people expect from us.

The recently announced aid increases of at least €200 million over the next three years will bring Ireland's spending on overseas aid to €665 million in 2007, an historic high and a further increase of 40% on the current level of spending. Ireland, unlike many donors, has successfully focused its aid programme on the needs of the poorest countries. Some 50% of our total aid budget goes to the world's poorest countries. Ireland is one of only six countries in the world to have surpassed the target endorsed by the UN of contributing at least 0.15% of GNP in ODA to the world's least developed countries.

Unique among donors, Ireland's ODA has always been untied and this principle will be vigorously maintained. While some countries give more than Ireland in volume, and sometimes per capita terms, they sometimes link the provision of overseas aid to entering into contractual relations, commercial and otherwise, between the donor and recipient countries. This is not a practice Ireland should imitate.

One of the central purposes of the White Paper process I have initiated is to ensure the core principles we hold dear in terms of overseas development should be enshrined in a White Paper, should be clear and unalterable and should be a matter of cross-party consensus, which I think they are. We should enshrine these principles in stone and make clear to the public and the wider world they are the ones we hold dear and will hold to as our programme expands and develops.

Ireland was the first donor to support the objective of total debt cancellation for heavily-indebted poor countries. We have consistently promoted this position in the Bretton Woods institutions at a time when the policy was not favoured by either major creditor countries or by multilateral organisations. I pay tribute to the likes of Bob Geldof and Bono who have taken a personal interest in this area. However, before these two individuals started proselytising in the area of debt relief and cancellation, the Irish State, through its aid programme, had already led the way and established a principled stance that poor, heavily-indebted countries should be given immediate 100% debt relief. The Irish aid programme and Irish policy makers, on a cross-party basis, have led the way in terms of thinking in this regard and continue to do so in the policies we outline today through our aid programme. We have underpinned our policy with generous financial support over the past few years for debt relief activities even though Ireland has never extended development assistance in the form of loans.

HIV-AIDS is a massive threat to global development. We were one of the first donors to have an integrated strategy to fight HIV-AIDS as part of our aid programme. We now spend in excess of €50 million on HIV-AIDS prevention and care programmes each year. We are also one of the first donors to take on the very difficult task of long-term provision of anti-retroviral treatment which is currently being scaled up in Mozambique, one of six programme countries in Africa where we concentrate most of our overseas aid effort. Some 85% of what we fund on the bilateral programme goes to the poorest of the poor in sub-Saharan Africa.

This House should acknowledge the excellent international reputation of the Government's official aid programme, as evaluated independently by the development assistance committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. We have been unique in world terms in how these programmes have been appraised. This is of critical importance as we seek to develop our programme. We have been the subject of two praiseworthy successful evaluations by the Paris-based OECD which conducts these evaluations on behalf of the member states of the OECD. The evaluations have praised us highly as being up there with best practice. We must maintain that position.

I noted with some concern the assertion by Senator Quinn, who was kind in his contribution with regard to me, that in order to fulfil our obligations to reach the 0.7% target, we should enter into a cheque signing exercise. The suggestion seems to be we should simply sign a cheque and post it off to the UN or the other multinational agencies. We are already serious donors to those agencies and virtually everywhere I travel in the world I am thanked by the major UN family agencies for the enormous contribution we make. In volume and per capita terms, we are among the leading donors to some of these agencies.

Senator McDowell mentioned in his contribution the issue concerning sexual and reproductive health. In this regard, Thoraya Obaid, a Saudi national who is a director of the UNFPA, thanked me recently at a meeting in Holland for the Irish contribution, which she said was unrivalled. In her experience this response is wanting in other countries. She said she wished every other member of the UN was as punctilious, proper and prompt in their contributions to the UNFPA. Ireland has had a chequered history with regard to reproductive health and one can imagine that some conservative voices might suggest we should not fund this programme. There has been active debate on the topic. However, we remain an active contributor and a true believer in supporting that and other UN funds.

This House should understand that the basis of Irish public policy on overseas development is framed by and aligned to the millennium development goals. They are the template for Irish policy decision making. Ireland is living up to its international obligations. We believe in the goals and believe they can be achieved. Towards that end, and as part and parcel of the White Paper process which I mentioned already, we must align our entire policy with the millennium development goals so there is nothing in Irish policy that contradicts or hinders their achievement. We regard them as the template. The goals can be achieved and there are obvious benefits to be gained from achieving them. It is also good practice to align our policy with them.

The millennium goals agreed by the governments of 189 nations are the best and most comprehensive plan we have to try to end human misery and build strong foundations for development and peace. To put it most simply, the millennium development goals are a deal where the developed world agreed to provide the resources to help fund programmes in health care, education and infrastructural development and where developing countries agreed to implement measures to counter corruption, reduce poverty and promote democracy, peace and accountability where these have been, unfortunately, absent.

All of the policies and activities of the programme are to be judged against this commitment and their ability to achieve progress towards the goals. In a report recently compiled for the UN General Secretary, Kofi Annan, Jeffrey Sachs clearly outlines in rigorous technical detail not only that the millennium development goals set out in 2000 can still be achieved by 2015, but also how this can be done. This is the first time that a comprehensive costing exercise has been done and it is worth noting that the experts conclude that significant progress towards the achievement of the goals can be made with an investment of just 0.5% of the incomes of developed countries like Ireland.

As I said earlier, the issue for Ireland of how best to meet the 0.7% target, and in what timeframe, is currently under review. What is clear is that we must set a timeframe that is achievable, does not adversely affect the quality of our aid programme and is carefully managed. Some have made the critical observation that while the volume of our aid is obviously important, what is critical is the quality of our aid programme. In this context it is well to remember that it is a universally accepted principle in business that what constitutes a major threat to the viability of any organisation or business is rapid unplanned growth and expansion.

I do not need to remind people of that fact. I was therefore surprised at the approach taken by Senator Quinn. I do not wish to be too critical because in the main his contribution was positive and benign. It would be bad for Ireland's development role and moral commitment to developing nations to engage in an operation where we sign a cheque and send it off to a multinational agency with the result that we could not guarantee good value for money and best practice in development terms. The one area where we can guarantee best practice and value for money is in regard to our bilateral programme. Senator McDowell stated——