John Gerard Hanafin (Fianna Fail)

I warmly welcome the Minister of State to the House. This Bill gives us an opportunity to discuss wider issues in connection with overseas development aid. If there is something we have learned it is that when you give, you receive. Aid works. After the Second World War much of industry in western Europe was devastate, people were displaced, economies and cities lay in ruins and the American plan, the Marshall plan, allowed a regeneration of the economies, society and democracies. I am pleased that we have seen the European Community develop and extend that practice. Eastern Germany, which immediately comes to mind, is being developed by western Germany with the aid of EU funding. Eastern Europe has given us wonderful opportunities by providing many of the migrant workers we badly need here who are working hard. They are a fine example and are so welcome. It is our contribution to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the different development banks, including the Bretton Woods Agreement, that allows us to play our role. Ireland plays a personal role because the Irish are generous. We have seen this in our response to the tsunami and to the pain and suffering caused by famine. Some of the leading figures in this regard were Irish, such as Bob Geldof, Bono and the thousands of missionaries who gave of their lives for others. That is a fine example of Ireland's response.

We also have a fine political tradition. In a sense between the personal, the institutional and the political we are seeing the culmination of the vision of John Cardinal Newman who, more than 100 years ago, spoke about how he saw land. He saw land as a bridge between the less well-off and the well-off. He knew in his vision where Ireland would lie. I am proud that we are becoming that vision. We have never been colonists but we know poverty and we have experienced hardship.

In the early 1960s Ireland was a very different place from the Ireland of today. Our demographics were skewed and young people were leaving the country in their hundreds of thousands. It was a country where there were many elderly and many young people. There was not the economy that we know today. It was certainly less developed and, in a sense, it was hardly a self-sufficient economy. However, we grew that economy and opened up to world markets. We have a role to play in showing and helping others to get to where we are. We can thank people such as Lemass, the Civil Service and Ken Whitaker who played such an important role in bringing Ireland to where it is today.

Institutions such as the Institute of Public Administration which educates and develops the public service will have a role in the future. Many of the countries we are aiding and will aid have difficulties in terms of corruption and the way they see things. They could benefit from coming here and learning from our fine Civil Service which has done so much to develop our country.

The Bill provides for aid to Mongolia. All politics is local. Within the past month I met the Mongolian ambassador in London. I was happy to bring him to this House and to have brought him and a delegation to the Joint Committee on Enterprise and Small Business. Mongolia is not that far away. Senator Mansergh mentioned the great tradition in parts of Mongolia. The Mongolian Empire was the largest empire the world had ever seen and extended into China. Mongolia is referred to in that great poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan, "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree". There, Mongolians had built their palaces and had a fine culture, which went on to develop in India, China and other parts of the world.