Emigrants abroad: The Labour Party has accused the Government of providing Irish emigrants with only a quarter of the funding level recommended in a report it commissioned two years ago.
The figures in Thursday's Estimates provide for €8 million in funding for emigrant-related work.
Mr Emmet Stagg, Labour's chief whip, said that the Government's own Task Force on Policy Regarding Emigrants recommended that funding for emigrants rise to €34 million by 2005.
"With more than 40 billion to allocate in the Estimates, the Minister for Finance, Brian Cowen, would hardly have missed the extra €24 million required to meet the task force figure," he said, "but it would have made a huge difference to those organisations working with Irish emigrants abroad, particularly those in Britain.
"There are many of those whose contributions from abroad helped to keep the country afloat in the dire economic times of the 1950s and 1960s who have now fallen on difficult times. Minister Cowen has passed over the opportunity to begin repaying the debt we owe them."
The task force, which reported in 2002, also recommended the establishment of an agency for Irish abroad, which has not been implemented. The report said "immediate assistance" was needed for those who left in the 1950s exodus.
"Older emigrants face particular problems. Many had to settle, at least in the early stages, for insecure manual jobs," the report said. "They made inadequate provision for their retirement. Now, as they reach retirement age, many of them require special assistance."