Madam, - Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern asserts in last Saturday's edition that John O'Shea does not understand the complexities of international development.
As someone who has worked in development for 25 years in Africa and Asia, I could not agree more. John O'Shea visits "the field"; he does not work there. His views on how development agencies on the ground have to work with sovereign states are simplistic.
Moreover, his views echo a neocolonialist approach to development. The way Mr O'Shea describes it, Ireland should get out there and tell Uganda, Kenya, etc how to run their countries; and if the governments of those countries don't listen we should just pull out and let the people suffer. If only life were so simple.
As a development practitioner I am painfully aware of the huge corruption in many countries in Africa and elsewhere. Nonetheless we cannot bypass host governments to get to the people. Would the Irish Government allow that here? Would any government allow that?
We have to work with governments to promote democracy and human rights. We have to work with them to build institutions and safeguards against corruption, even corruption within the ranks of the politicians we deal with. And we have to work with them to ensure development aid is appropriately used.
This is not done by imposition but co-operation. Sitting in Dublin with a bag of money in one hand and a big stick in another will not do it. In fact it gives a bad name to international development. - Yours, etc,
PATRICK HENNESSY, Kathmandu, Nepal.
Madam, - It is difficult to square the load of self-serving guff in Dermot Ahern's article last Saturday with his normally intelligent pronouncements. Why all the plamás about Ireland's "unique sense of solidarity with the world's poor"? What basis is there for the suggestion that "our history is that of the world's poor"?
Can we blindly accept the assertion that "our great missionary tradition" is quite as pure and selfless as he implies? If he bases his case on such tattered sentimentalism, one cannot help doubting his claim that John O'Shea is wrong to criticise Ireland's reliance on corrupt governments to distribute our aid to the poor of Africa.
Anyone who has been in the third world and seen it from the ground, as opposed to through the luxury of chauffeured limousines, five-star hotels and the dancing attendance of officials, will tell you that there is no comparison between our allegedly impoverished background and that of the appalling conditions endured by many people in Africa, South America and Asia.
Of course we had famine and strife but so did most everyone else in Europe. Some had it more recently. Those who suffered under war conditions in Eastern Europe or more recently in the former Yugoslavia can speak of a sense of solidarity and shared experience with the ethnically oppressed, starving and abused. Please don't belittle that, Mr Ahern, by recycling that old canard that we are the most oppressed people ever.
The many Irish names to be found in the lists of plantation managers, slave overseers and colonial administrations is evidence of the vacuousness of Mr Ahern's claims about our solidarity with the oppressed. Mr Ahern should stop being so self-congratulatory and deal with the issues directly.
Some 80 per cent of our aid to Africa goes through the hands of corrupt governments. I am unimpressed by Mr Ahern's use of such pathetic arguments and his smug, dismissive attitude to Mr O'Shea's voice of experience. - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL ANDERSON, Moyclare Close, Baldoyle, Dublin 13.