Is Ireland's EU image for the fairies?

SEEN any elves recently? Well, that's the generic term applied by the French Reportages, to your very own local leprechaun. Tempting the reader to immerse in L'Imaginaire Irlandais, it gives a detailed guide to pookas, which are native to, Kerry, boggards and grogahs from the Burren, and cluricaunes, the leprechaun's Ulster cousin.

A friend in Paris who referred, me to the magazine believes its says something about the Ireland which she has left. She is struck by the growing gap between reality and myth.

On the one hand a head of state who talks about a vital modern Ireland, with a young generation learning to "negotiate the past images of the Famine" a cultural renaissance and a diaspora which cherishes its roots. On the other, hand the recent violent deaths of Veronica Guerin and Garda Jerry McCabe the bleak situation in the North the destruction at St Michan's and publication of a report on the State's largest prison which paints a picture of an Ireland of unemployment, drug related crime, and despair.

Also on one hand, a campaign for an Irish UN secretary general, with sterling support for the President, Mrs Robinson, from the other side of the Irish Sea. On the other hand, a deafening silence here in defence of the current incumbent, Dr Boutros Boutros Ghali, who has fallen foul of the US and Israel and an increasingly selective response to certain international situations, on foot of our obligations to the EU.

Public image, rather than substance, seems to be the preoccupation of this EU presidency. Is it image, or genuine need, that results in journalists being chaperoned by very pleasant members of a hard pressed Garda Siochana around Dublin Castle? Is it public image, or protocol, that ensures that controversy and any hint of disagreement with our EU partners is avoided at all cost?

Take the aid seminar hosted by the Irish Aid Advisory Council, and opened by the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ms Joan Burton, in Dublin Castle earlier this week. "Humanitarian crises prevention, response and rehabilitation" was the very laudable agenda, and the list of speakers including Commissioner Emma Bonino (who also carries the humanitarian brief) and former UN envoy to Somalia, Mohamed Sahnoun was second to none.

Yet as a forum for debate, it left little time for interaction. Dochas, the Irish Association for NonGovernmental Development Organisations, was particularly disappointed that it did not include development on the agenda.

Still development did arise, and was referred to by Mrs Robinson in her closing remarks and the EU's own responsibility for political crises came into sharp focus. Just day's after the USS John F Kennedy weighed anchor, it came as something of a jolt to be reminded by Justin Kilcullen of Trocaire that France is the largest exporter of arms to developing countries. And that the EU is the largest arms exporting bloc.

The Irish position on arms is clear, but the EU presidency does provide an opportunity to influence agendas on other aspects of EU business. The EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) have been criticised before now for their effect on economic insecurity in the developing world.

Up to 50 per cent of the CFP budget is now spent on "third country agreements", or fishing rights purchased from non member states to supply the voracious EU. As a recent Senegalese delegation to Dublin pointed out, some 500,000 people in the west African state of Senegal depend on fisheries for their income, and fish makes up 85 per cent of the average protein diet in the region.

The EU's agreement with the Senegalese government, which is up for renewal during the Irish presidency, permits inshore fishing by Spanish, French and Italian vessels with consequent risk to stocks. The Senegalese group did arrive in Dublin on the same day as a more important visitor, the EU Commission, president, Mr Jacques Santer.

Yet the appeal it made to the Irish presidency over the "neo-colonialist" policies of the EU's fisheries directorate could elicit no more than a "noted their concerns" comment from the Department of the Marine..

Government ministers are not the only ones affected by "two mindedness" that condition identified by Seamus Heaney and quoted recently by the President in a different context. A contribution to the letters page of this newspaper some weeks ago gave another insight into Ireland's great concern for international welfare and human rights. It was a call for a consumer boycott of Shell products and an embargo against all Nigerian oil, made by Dr Owens Wiwa, the brother of the hanged Nigerian activist and writer, Ken Saro Wiwa.

Beside it, a short letter from a leading Irish aid agency, dissociating itself from a political campaign by an Irish solidarity group. The campaign, which is being pursued by Action from Ireland (AFrI), involves an Irish company's treatment of banana workers in the central American state of Belize. As reported by Michael McCaughan in this newspaper, the situation is complex, but workers claimed that they had to work in appalling living conditions on farms run by Ireland's 12th largest publicly quoted company, Fyffes.

The average Irish banana eater might have heard nothing about it, were it not for the recent visit by Ms Marciana Funez of the United Banners Banana Workers' Union. She claimed that workers risked dismissal if they signed up.

Fyffes is "outraged" at being targeted in this way. The company, owned by the Dundalk family, McCanns, had been linked to Belize's banana export industry since the 1970s, and only became involved in production and management of the three farms in south east Belize at the request of the government there in 1991.

THE BELIZE government stipulates that a union can only be recognised when it only from 51 per cent of the workforce. To date, Ms Funez has failed to gain that, it says.

It is "easier" to target a foreign multinational than a locally owned farm, Fyffes says. The Irish company has contributed to new housing schemes, which would relocate workers away from harmful chemical use it had already agreed to union membership long before Ms Funez's visit, it says and intended to hand the farms back to local management when they became commercially viable.

Fyffes has gone to some considerable trouble and expense to proclaim its innocence through the public relations firm, Wilson Hartnell. Ms Funez relies on her union, and on AFrl's support.

Fyffes says it gives generous donations to projects in Central America, and to Irish aid agencies. Most significantly, it says, it has not been adversely affected by any consumer response.

Irish Shell says it hasn't suffered either, in spite of the recent call for a boycott by the Minister of State, Mr Pat Rabbitte, over its role in Nigeria. Praised in some quarters for his courage and criticised by Fianna Fail for "outrageous hypocrisy and opportunism," Mr Rabbitte had a point about "responsive consumerism".

It is one of those luxuries that comes with a free market. Unlike an Irish banana importer, an oil multinational is a safe target, and the Republic does not have particularly close links with Nigeria, other than those of the missionary kind.

Trespassing on Labour Party territory, the Minister of State is known to have been amazed at the publicity surrounding his remarks. He may, indeed, have been opportunistic. Yet even a seasoned development worker, who has most politicians' measure, welcomes his essential link.

Verbal commitments may not always match reality they probably never did. But quotable aspirations are always useful, the development expert says. And, at a time when Ireland is EU president, the "embarrassment factor" is to the general good.