Taoiseach attacked for failure to honour overseas aid pledge

THE opposition rounded on the Taoiseach yesterday as he took the last Leaders’ Questions session before the Dáil breaks for three months tomorrow.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny accused the Government of breaking promises to increase overseas development aid to 0.7% of GNP, solve the problems in the health service, put 2,000 extra gardaí on the streets, and reduce class sizes in schools.

“Promise after promise and commitment after commitment have been broken,” Mr Kenny said.

In relation to development aid, he said the Taoiseach had told the UN in September 2000 that Ireland would achieve the 0.7% target by 2007, only to renege on that promise.

“How can we believe this Government when, in respect of the poorest people in the world, the Taoiseach stood up in front of the nations of the world and said we would achieve our target by 2007?

“Promises and commitments have no value because his word no longer counts for anything.”

Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte said the Government would “limp off” into the summer recess “with the ministerial debris of the parliamentary year still on the front bench.”

Mr Rabbitte pointed first to Ministers Noel Dempsey and Martin Cullen for pushing a €52m electronic voting project that was subsequently mothballed. The Labour leader then singled out Enterprise Minister Micheál Martin, whose behaviour in relation to the illegal nursing home charges debacle while he held the Health portfolio “would, according to the former ombudsman (Kevin Murphy), make previous ministers squirm in their graves.”

Then there was the failure of former and current justice ministers John O’Donoghue and Michael McDowell, respectively, to establish a tribunal into garda corruption in Donegal until 2002, 18 months after the gardaí had sent them a 37-page summary of an investigation into the matter carried out by Assistant Commissioner Kevin Carty.

The Taoiseach defended the two ministers, saying they had “acted totally properly and correctly”. He also defended his government’s record on several fronts, including overseas development aid.

But his cause wasn’t helped when Liz O’Donnell last night labelled the decision to abandon the 2007 aid pledge as “indefensible”. Ms O’Donnell, who as a former junior minister had responsibility for the area for five years, said: “This decision has been reversed (and) the Government has been rightly criticised.”