Sir, - Two years on from the catastrophic hurricane which devastated large swathes of the beautiful Central American country of Honduras, it is good to be able to report some encouraging news.
Last week I had the very great pleasure to visit Honduras to attend a ceremony at which a scheme of 75 houses built by GOAL for hurricane victims in the village of San Geronimo was officially handed over to the beneficiaries. This scheme is one of several that GOAL has been working on - altogether we are building 600 houses. Unlike many other aid situations that I have witnessed over the years the programmes in Honduras have been relatively trouble free and local authorities have been extremely receptive to the help that they have been getting. This is often not the case - some governments and local officials, apart from being totally corrupt, make ridiculous demands of the aid agencies and the whole process gets tangled up in red tape.
I found the Hondurans to be charming people, eager to solve the problems thrown up by Hurricane Mitch and appreciative of any assistance they can get to put their country back on a proper footing.
GOAL and other agencies are doing their bit for the Hondurans but the scale of the problem is huge. In the days and weeks after Mitch wreaked such havoc promises of international aid flooded in. Unfortunately, as the winds abated and the floods receded, much of the promised money evaporated into thin air.
There is still much to be done in Honduras and it is time that the people, including the EU, who were so fulsome in their promises at the time, matched their words with much more substantial amounts to reinstate the country's infrastructure. - Yours, etc.,
John O'Shea, GOAL, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.