Three Catholic bishops have called on the Government, the Catholic Church and the public to increase their efforts to help the people of Central America following the destruction caused by Hurricane Mitch.
The Trocaire chairman, Bishop John Kirby of Clonfert; Bishop Bill Murphy of Kerry; and auxiliary Bishop Ray Field of Dublin returned to Ireland yesterday after an eight-day visit to the region.
They expressed shock at the conditions they had experienced and called on the Government to press for relief of the major debt burdens faced by Honduras and Nicaragua.
Bishop Kirby also condemned as "niggardly and mean" the Government decision to freeze the Overseas Development Aid (ODA) budget for a year.
"We are a country which has developed considerably because of development aid from the EU," he told a press conference in Dublin.
"Yet we are niggardly and mean about caring for developing countries. We are now becoming one of the better-off countries of the world and we should be helping other countries."
The State was falling short of its own target of increasing the ODA budget to 0.45 per cent of GNP by 2002.
"That target was set by the Government, not by Trocaire", he said, "but we are slipping back on it."
The target set by the UN was 0.7 per cent, but he believed Ireland would reach just 0.35 per cent by 2002. Ireland's contribution to overseas development as a percentage of GNP will fall below 0.3 per cent next year, he said.
Bishop Murphy said they were "shocked, appalled, and almost frightened" by what they had seen in Honduras and Nicaragua. It had been far worse than expected.
He was nevertheless "amazed by the resilience of the people" he went on. "They are already beginning to pick up the pieces. We were humbled by the depth of their gratitude to us for visiting and their gratitude to Trocaire and the Irish people for coming to their aid."
Bishop Field described the situation as "an appalling tragedy on a number of levels. Honduras already had a foreign debt of $4.5 billion, he said, while the flood damage was estimated at $4 billion.
Some 7,000 people had died, at least 12,000 were missing and some 300,000 were currently in makeshift shelters.
Ms Mary Sutton, Trocaire's director of communications and education, who was also on the trip said there was great fear of epidemic in the region. Trocaire had hired extra local staff and had been loaned other workers by the Agency for Personal Service Overseas. They now had 1,000 people in the region, and had raised more than £1 million for the relief operation. The Bank of Ireland has organised a special staff appeal for Central America on Friday, December 4th. Members of the public will be able to contribute at any Bank of Ireland branch on that day.