Brendan Ryan (Labour)

We will, however, have greater difficulty forgiving the junior partners in Government for holding their conference on one of the days to which I refer and thereby distracting attention from our deliberations. We will not fall out on this issue.

I wish to begin by apologising to the Minister of State. On his initial appointment and for the fun of it, I made a few less than flattering comments as much to annoy his aunt as anything else. However, the energy he has brought to his job is a credit to him. I will continue to disagree with him about many matters but the energy and enthusiasm is refreshing, welcome and has illustrated a general sense of activism.

There are many comments I wish to make in respect of the White Paper. However, I wish my comments to take the form of constructive suggestions regarding things we could do better. May we take it as read that there is nothing in the White Paper with which anybody in Ireland disagrees. I will avoid referring to delays, broken promises, etc., and will merely state that such promises were made and were broken.

I hope we have reached a consensus that the target of 0.7% for overseas development aid should be reached by 2012. We are a generous people but there are countries situated not too far away that are moving beyond that target. I will happily qualify that and state that, in respect of other areas, some of these countries are not in a position to point the finger at Ireland because much of their aid is vigorously tied. It is easier to set a target of 1% if a country is determined to inform the recipients of aid that the additional 0.3% will be comprised of what that country wants them to purchase from it. That is a pretend form of aid.

Ireland's fundamental decision that its aid would not be either explicitly or implicitly tied was one of a considerable number of such decisions that displayed foresight and generosity. The decision to which I refer has given rise to Ireland's overseas development aid being of a very high quality. This might have been a factor in the delay in not reaching 0.7%. I am not persuaded in that regard but I accept that it might have been a factor. It would have been bad to lose the sense of the importance of quality. The White Paper refers a great deal to the need for quality.

I am somewhat disappointed because the impact of the arms trade on development is not dealt with in the White Paper. The two are inseparable. I attended a conference in Nairobi before last year's summer recess, the subject of which was the availability of small arms in the Great Lakes region. What I heard and saw there was terrifying. When I refer to small arms, I am not merely talking about pistols. The weapons referred to went from pistols up to and including light missile launchers that could be slung over one's shoulder. Literally hundreds of thousands of such weapons are available in the Great Lakes region of Africa.

The scandalous aspect of this matter is that approximately 60% of the arms to which I refer originated in some part of Europe. That is disturbing. The European Union must take action in respect of this matter. Many governments have a reasonably good record on the issue of armaments. However, The Irish Times yesterday — lost among other matters — contained a report from Oxfam, Amnesty, etc., that the world is spending more on arms now than was spent at the height of the Cold War. It was stated in the report that $1.058 billion is spent each year on armaments, 80% of which are produced by six countries, five of which are the United States, Russia, Germany, France and Britain. This represents the most phenomenal waste of money.

We cannot change the entire world but we have a duty to examine our values in this area. There has been considerable discussion regarding reviewing the licensing system for dual use materials. However, the debate has never been progressed. I invite the Minister of State to release some of his energy in the direction of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and ask it to get the finger out and take action. I will not criticise a Government that takes decisions, even if it means that jobs will be lost in some areas.

Trading in arms is an immoral way to prosper. The report from Amnesty, Oxfam, etc., refers to the ways in which it is possible to avoid the restrictions that are in place. This links to development because one of the mistakes many developing countries make is that they seem to believe that regardless of their level of impoverishment, they must have armies of First World quality. Whether per capita, as a percentage of GNP or whatever, we spend less on defence than many countries that are not in a position to provide a decent living for their people. In that context, it must be remembered that we were obliged to live with terrorism and all sorts of civil insecurity.

I am not necessarily stating that the arms trade should have been dealt with in the White Paper. However, the latter remains incomplete in the absence of our facing up to what I believe to be one of the most immoral trades. It is even more threatening to ordinary people than the drugs trade. It is of enormous significance; 30 times more money is spent on arms than on overseas development aid.

The apparent unwillingness to confront our impact on developing countries is also linked to this. The metal coltan is used in the manufacture of mobile phones and the smuggling of it is at the core of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The DRC has large and valuable coltan resources and the trade involves neighbouring countries and others. If we do not have a rigid, enforceable control of arms, weapons will be sucked into areas where people consider it worth fighting to get their hands on extremely valuable resources. Coltan is one such resource about which we do not hear much.

I also wish to address the issue of human rights. I am not saying the Opposition is vastly better than the Government on this issue, I do not think it is that sort of a debate. However, I am concerned about wobbly views on human rights. Courtesy of the Minster of State, I was in Ethiopia earlier in the year. It was a valuable and useful trip. It is a sign of Ireland's standing in Ethiopia that the delegation spent almost two hours having a full and frank discussion with the prime minister on internal Ethiopian affairs. We could have been told that they were internal affairs and therefore none of our business. Neither the prime minister nor the Irish delegation took offence at the nature of the meeting's content and I am sure it served some purpose. I am sure the Minister of State's diligent officials have given him a comprehensive report on the meeting and he probably knows more about it than I now remember.

I contrast the funny happenings in Ethiopia and our willingness to understand its problems — I fully accept the need for the Government to take a measured approach — with the boycott of the democratically elected government of the Palestinian Territories. It is difficult for me to explain to people in Palestine why we understand the pressures the government of Ethiopia is under, and yet we demand from the elected government of the Palestinian Territories a succession of rigid, inflexible preconditions that we demand from nobody else. It undermines the moral basis of our whole commitment to development.

While I am not sure of the latest phase, as they sometimes can get lost, there was a willingness to write off debt in the case of Iraq that has not been visible in many other countries, such as Mozambique, that are struggling to build functioning democracies. There is a rigidity, slowness and conditionality about writing off debt that was not the case for Iraq. We need to have a position that does not devalue itself by saying we believe in one thing but then support actions which mean something else.

My Labour Party colleague, Proinsias De Rossa MEP, issued a report regarding child labour labelling on the produce of developing countries and it has been adopted by the European Parliament. When I buy an item of clothing, it is dreadful that I cannot know where it was made. It could well have been made in Burma or other countries where child labour is unregulated and unrestricted. It is easy to say that this is outside the reach of the Department of Foreign Affairs. However, this is an agreed White Paper and it should be agreed that the Irish public, which is so committed to the issue of development, should be in a position to exercise consumer choice via a proper labelling system where they know what they are buying is produced under acceptable conditions.

While the White Paper deals at length with fair trade and free trade this mostly relates to food products, etc. We must ensure the concept of fair trade extends into textiles and clothing to exclude the possibility of us saving a little expenditure on the back of exploited child labour. In principle, my party welcomes the White Paper and look forward to its consistent and enthusiastic implementation.