Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Conor Lenihan. Today we have an ODA programme of which we can be proud. I would like us to go on making progress and do better, but we are doing well. The EU target, for example, is 0.39% of GNP by 2007 and we are already past that point. As far as promises are concerned, obviously the Opposition wishes to make a political point. However, I will do them the credit of believing that, like me, they genuinely and sincerely want to see the target reached as soon as possible.

I have been looking up Garret FitzGerald's autobiography. There was a Government decision in November 1973 to raise overseas development aid by 0.05% a year. In 1982, the Fine Gael-Labour Party coalition promised to reach 0.7% by 1987. When the national coalition came to power in 1994, it was to go up by 0.05% a year and should have reached 0.4% by 1997. Deputy Burton and the Government got the figure up to 0.3% and I am not disposed to criticise her. She did her best during that time and I have the height of respect for her. She and her husband had worked on overseas development on the ground. It is quite difficult and all countries have had the experience of raising spending to the level that one would wish.

Jeffrey Sachs, who we all ought to know is the millennium development goals special envoy, wants every country to achieve a target of 0.5% of GNP by 2015. I quoted from the interview in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on the last occasion that I spoke on this subject. He said that, if all countries could do that, it would help achieve the millennium development goals. We had an interim target before of 0.45% and we should set another because I do not believe we will achieve it all in one go. The obvious interim target, as I said in the debate on the tsunami, is 0.5%.

I hope that it might be possible for us to achieve that by the end of the Government's term in office. I would like us to be out among the leaders — the four or five countries that are over 0.7% — as soon as possible. I greatly welcome the way in which, perhaps because of the tsunami disaster, development assistance has received political attention and priority. However, it has to compete against many other areas. There are many good and worthwhile causes and it is not realistic to pick out one area of Government policy and fix it legislatively. The same case could be made on behalf of disability and several other sectors.

We have a very good programme and have made great progress in the past ten or 12 years. However, it will need sustained political will. The Minister and his Department can be sure of my complete support in the internal battles that he will have to fight.