Thirty per cent of Australians have Irish roots and have a great interest in Ireland, the Australian Foreign Minister, Mr Alexander Downer, told members of the International Fund for Ireland yesterday. He was in Dundalk, Co Louth, where he handed over a cheque for 1.5 million Australian dollars (about £750,000) to the chairman of the IFI, Mr Willie McCarter.
Mr Downer said the donation represented "the government's desire to assist those in Northern Ireland and the Republic worst affected by the violence of recent years to rebuild confidence in the search for a lasting settlement". Australia consisted of 130 nationalities, races, religions and ethnic groups and in those circumstances it had no choice but to have a doctrine or ethos of tolerance, he said.
A number of young people who are part of the Wider Horizons programme, fun ded by the IFI, attended. They are to join 24 people from Cavan and Fermanagh to travel to Australia later this month to work on a community project.
The presentation was in the Dundalk Employment Partnership, one of a number of enterprises in buildings built with IFI support. The fund was established in 1986 to counteract the effects of instability in Northern Ireland and the Border counties. Australia joined in 1995 and pledged $7.5 million over five years.