When the leaders of the industrialised world arrive for the G8 summit in Birmingham on May 18th they will be met by thousands of activists demonstrating their support for the cancellation of Third World debt.

With only 18 months to go to the new millennium, the campaigners for debt cancellation are stepping up a gear. Already in Britain, the Jubilee 2000 Coalition has amassed four million signatures in support of its cause; in Ireland, the figure is 80,000 and rising.

In more than 30 Western countries, a patchwork of church, development and trade union organisations is trying to build up support for the Jubilee concept. The aim is to put grassroots pressure on national politicians and place the issue of debt cancellation on the agenda of world bankers.

In Ireland, the campaign is likely to receive a major boost if, as expected, the Catholic bishops give their backing. A decision is likely at the summer meeting of the bishops' conference with a statement to all parishes likely to follow during Advent. The Church of Ireland is also fully behind the Jubilee campaign and proposals to further the cause of debt cancellation are on the agenda of a special committee set up to find ways of marking the millennium.

The Debt and Development Coalition, a group of social activists and returned development workers, has been pressing the issue for a number of years and hopes to influence Department of Finance thinking on the matter. It aims to collect 250,000 signatures in support of its proposals in time to hand them in at next year's G8 summit in Germany.

Ms Carol Dorgan of the Irish Jubilee 2000 campaign believes the World Bank is "sympathetic" to debt cancellation, but doesn't yet see the need to change its models of development.

But are the Jubilee 2000 campaigners just idealists, or even dangerously naive? They might have been so labelled a few years ago, but not any more. Debt cancellation has moved into the mainstream of economic thinking, as more and more bankers accept that the poorest countries are caught in a spiral of debt which leaves both them and the banks worse off.

"Everyone was belly-aching about debt a few years ago, but nothing was happening. But now the World Bank and the IMF have come a long way in terms of their social concerns, and the campaigners have realised that not all debt can be cancelled," says one Government economist.

The international financial institutions are looking at a variety of solutions, he says, though not all can bring themselves to apply the name of debt cancellation to them. Ireland is looking at how it can contribute to these initiatives.

It could be pointed out that Ireland has considerable foreign debt, yet its economy is thriving. The difference is that Ireland has had significant inward investment since the 1960s, whereas most international investors "wouldn't touch the poorest countries with a barge-pole", the economist says.