Larry Butler (Fianna Fail)

It is difficult to imagine a mother and her children starving but we, more than most, can understand it as we had a famine. I welcome the impressive report produced by the committee under the chairmanship of the former Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mr. Joe Walsh. He was an outstanding Minister and knows how agriculture can be of enormous support to those suffering from starvation. We can agree to provide a percentage of gross national product to people in the Third World who are less well off than ourselves. The most important contribution we can make, however, is to send people abroad to demonstrate how agricultural production can feed those who so badly need it. That is the key to the problem. We have done so before. We sent our missionaries overseas and our brothers, sisters and priests have done an outstanding job in various parts of the world. Our non-governmental organisations are doing significant work there now. We must continue this. We are the sixth highest contributor to the Third World, which is a great achievement. Most importantly, however, we must continue to send our men and women to physically work in the Third World, including nurses, doctors, teachers and others. If we teach a man to fish, he will be able to feed himself for life. That is vital.

Money must be spent properly so that we get value for it. We must insist that governments in developing countries in which our aid workers are involved should display a certain commitment to agriculture. This seems to be a major problem as we can see in countries where starvation is occurring.

The projects we undertake in future will underpin the proposals in the report we are considering. Senator Norris said we do not take this seriously enough, which we do not. We talk about it in this house but what do we do afterwards? Is it finished then? We must educate people and tell them what is happening. Approximately 1 billion people suffer from starvation while we belly-ache about banks and other matters on Joe Duffy's "Liveline" radio programme every other day. We should be thinking how to alleviate hunger in this world of ours. We must think also of our own people in the forthcoming budget. We must govern and deliver for our people, but when the world is starving, we must not forget to do our best to look after those who are suffering.