Quoting his fellow-poets W.B. Yeats and W.H. Auden, the Nobel prizewinner Mr Séamus Heaney helped to launch the United Nations 2004 Humanitarian Appeal in Dublin, yesterday. Deaglán de Bréadún, Foreign Affairs Correspondent, reports.
He said the appeal could be described in Yeats' words about what it meant to be fully alive, aware and responsible: I have tried to hold in a single thought reality and justice.
Mr Heaney, who was appointed as a UN goodwill ambassador by Mrs Mary Robinson, said that justice did not always play a part in the distribution of funds to the needy.
He said it was "reassuring and consoling" that the Minister of State for Development Co-operation, Mr Tom Kitt, was able to announce an Irish contribution of €6.7 million to the UN appeal.
The UN was an important mediator on behalf of those crying in the wilderness - "often literally crying". Those voices should be heard with a special sympathy in Ireland, "because they are the voices that we can also hear if we listen to our own past, a past that has included famine, eviction, deprivation".
Recalling how W.H. Auden had written at the start of the second World War, "All I have is a voice", Mr Heaney continued: "That was the sole possession of the majority of the Irish population for generations."
The Minister of State said most of the €6.7 million would be devoted to "forgotten emergencies" in Angola, Sierra Leone, Sudan, the Congo and the Palestinian Territories.
Mr Kitt said he was pleased that Ireland's budget for overseas development assistance would increase by €25 million next year, given "the pressures on the economy and the pressures on various sectors".
It would be "difficult" to achieve the UN target of 0.7 per cent of GNP for development aid, but he had a "total" commitment to it.
Other speakers at the launch included UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Mr Ruud Lubbers, UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Sierra Leone, Mr Alan Doss, and his counterpart in Angola, Mr Mario Ferrari.