In the Seanad on 16 February 2000, I seconded this motion by Senator Mary Henry:

"That Seanad Éireann recommends that the Government increase immediately the financial assistance given to Third World development aid from 0.31% of GNP to the recommended UN level of 0.7%; and calls on the Government to give further support to the efforts of Irish Aid in sub-Saharan Africa."

It is traditional when one stands up to second a motion to say one is happy to do so. However, I am not happy to second this motion; I am ashamed to do so.

I am ashamed of our performance in terms of development aid.

I am ashamed that the Government insists on playing Scrooge in the case of the poor countries in the world. Playing that role in the costume of the Celtic tiger is incongruous.

At one time we could put on the poor mouth with full justification. We did so when we sought money from Brussels which was of enormous benefit to us and have done so when dealing with the disadvantaged in our own country while promising to do the devil and all when resources permitted. 

We did the same when it came to supporting development aid, stating we would do what we could when resources permitted.

The poor mouth days are, we hope, gone forever but the poor mouth attitude remains. As a result poor mouth behaviour remains with us. We are behaving out of proportion to our means. 

We are mean when it comes to development aid. There is no excuse for this and that is why I am ashamed.

I have a mental picture of one of the mandarins in Merrion Street coming down to breakfast one morning in a very bad state and his wife looks at him and says, "What's wrong, love?" He tells her he had a dreadful nightmare and the wife says, "Tell me about it". He goes on to say it was really bad, thinks for a few minutes and says, "I had this outrageous dream that resources did permit". 

He could not live with that because he was so used to its being the other way.

Is there something at work about which we are not aware? 

Senator Henry pointed out that as individuals the Irish people are remarkable in their generosity and have been for years. When asked to support a good cause, we do - sometimes quite spectacularly. We do not seem to be deficient on an individual level but something happens when that individual level becomes a national one.

For some reason we, as a State, find it impossible to behave with the generosity that characterises our citizens. How can that be? What is the Irish State but the collective will of its people? 

How can the State be a Scrooge while individual citizens are generous almost to a fault?

This has only recently become a conundrum because until recently we were strapped for cash and the resources argument could always be used to fill that gap. We used it. The resources argument is no longer available, the gap is yawning at us, demanding to be explained.

Please do not get me wrong, I am not suggesting that even today we have money to do everything we want. No matter how large the budget surplus, any Minister for Finance could easily find ways to spend all that money several times over. There is a sense in which we will never have enough money to do everything we want, not immediately at least.

What is different now is that for the first time in the history of the State we do have the money to do the important things, perhaps not all the important things but certainly the vast majority of them. That is the revolutionary change that is happening to our finances.

The scope of that change is apparently too vast for some people to grasp. We do not have the money for everything but we have it for most of the important things. 

What happens?

We find we are not doing some of the important things, or not doing enough of them. Meanwhile we are throwing money around like snuff at a wake, as they used to say in the country, on imperial follies such as national stadia that I am not sure we want.

In Ireland we are not doing enough about the disadvantaged, although we are pouring money in that direction. It seems a great deal only in terms of what we used to spend, but in relation to the size of the problem and the difficulty in solving it, it is not a lot and, more crucially, it is not enough. Let us not think we have heard the last of disadvantage as a problem.

Outside Ireland we are as mean as ever. By juggling the figures we can claim to be doing more. The unforgiving benchmark is the percentage of national wealth we devote to development aid. On that United Nations benchmark we are a nation of rich meanies.

I wish to dwell on the irony of this from my particular viewpoint.

I have been concerned for some time about the danger of the economy overheating. The EU and the OECD are aware of it but at official level we pretend to think it is not a real issue. One of the budgetary problems is that the State has money coming out its ears. If it simply puts that money back into the national economy it will add to the overheating just like throwing oil on a fire. We should look at productive and deserving ways of spending money in a manner that will not contribute to that future overheating; spending more money on development aid is exactly one of those ways.

In addition to the overwhelming moral argument for being more generous, there is also an actual self-interested economic argument for doing so.

We have all the reasons in the world to be generous in our development aid yet we persist in being incredibly mean. I suggest incredible is the right word. 

I find it difficult to believe that as a country Ireland could be so mean when, for the first time in the history of the State, we have the actual means to meet and to surpass the not very demanding UN target set for us.  We are not even half way there. We can reach it and for the first time we are able to do it.

I second the motion but almost with a sense of shame because of our failure to achieve what is in our grasp.