Madam, - Between 1948 and 1952 the United States gave $13 billion, or one per cent of its GDP, to the crushed countries of Europe in what became known as the Marshall Plan. In your edition of July 9th Bob Geldof called for a new Marshall Plan for Africa, arguing that comparable funds today could win a major victory over hunger and disease on that continent.
Experts agree with him. Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, calculates that the critical areas of education, farming, and healthcare in the developing world could be transformed for less than 1 per cent of our annual incomes in the West.
It is easy to counter that simply throwing money at the world's problems will not solve them. But we should remember the Marshall Plan and be thankful that no one dissuaded the US from its largesse 50 years ago.
It is also true that charity begins at home, and that Ireland faces its own challenges in poverty and healthcare. Yet the needs of Irish people and the poorer peoples of the world are one and the same, even if they differ in scale, and the solution to both is the same: a radical change in how the State acts toward the sick and helpless at home and abroad.
All of us are affected by the scenes of poverty and hunger that we see daily on the streets and on television, and it is uncomfortable to hold those scenes in the mind for long. Yet this is part of the job our politicians are paid to do. We must at least ask them to do it. Our Government should use its upcoming EU Presidency to formally propose a new Marshall Plan for Africa. - Yours, etc.,
DAVID HANDY, Trimleston Avenue, Booterstown, Co Dublin.