On Thursday I left Ireland for Iraq, as a member of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs. I am writing this article shortly before leaving, and from what I have heard from press reports and elsewhere, I am rather fearful of the sights which lie ahead of us. The probability of a meeting with Saddam Hussein is remote but our group will request a meeting on arrival in Baghdad.

I was last in Baghdad in 1990, just before the Gulf War, to help secure the release of our nurses on contract to Parc (a subsidiary of Aer Lingus) at the Ibn al Bitar Hospital there. Michael D. Higgins and Paul Bradford (Fine Gael, Cork East) were also on this mission. I did not go with the blessing of my own then party establishment.

The night before our departure, during a lull in the voting during a division, Mr Charles Haughey called us over to wish us a safe return. With his wicked, and some might say perceptive sense of humour, he said he understood well myself and Michael D. going off to Baghdad at the time, as he knew us both to be quite mad. He could not, however, understand why an innocent young Deputy like Bradford was travelling with us. Happily Paul Bradford remains a Dail Deputy despite our bad influence on him at the time.

Iraq's recent history is one of coups, counter-coups, war and devastation. From 1980 to 1988 up to a million people died in pointless conflict between Iraq and its neighbour, Iran. Then in 1990 some 120,000 Iraqi troops foolishly invaded and annexed Kuwait. In the ensuing war many were killed and much of Iraq's infrastructure was destroyed.

Since the end of the Gulf War and the imposition of United Nations sanctions, the International Red Cross has estimated that infant mortality has doubled, unemployment has risen to a staggering 60 per cent, half a million children have died of malnutrition and a further one third of all children are malnourished. These are hardly the effects which men like Dag Hammarskjold, Trygye Lie or the founders of the United Nations had in mind when they considered the effects UN sanctions would have on the normal population of a UN member state.

The effects of sanctions on the Iraqi people seem especially unfair when we consider that Saddam Hussein's grip upon the machinery of state seems as complete as before the Gulf War.

Our outlook on Iraq is hopelessly inadequate. Were it not for the fearless and forthright efforts of individuals like our own Dennis Halliday, I fear that we would be completely unaware of what is happening.

For example, too few people appreciate the complexities behind the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. During the war itself, western news media did not acknowledge the fact that Kuwait was an integral part of Iraq for about 3,000 years before it was removed by the British for the same flawed geopolitical reasoning which lies behind much of Africa's present problems.

Also, as Dennis Halliday has pointed out, we are largely unaware of the debt-related problems between Iraq and Kuwait following the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, or of Iraqi charges that Kuwait was slant-drilling Iraqi oil in the border area. Theft by another name. Added to this is the fact that the Kuwaiti regime was, and is, undemocratic, like the Iraqi regime.

Plainly, political spin has utterly usurped political reality and warped historical fact in the Gulf. This political spin is, I fear, the continued justification behind the sanctions against the people of Iraq.

These issues were of concern to me, as minister for foreign affairs, just as I understand they are of concern to the present Minister, Brian Cowen. The Oil for Food Programme, through which Iraq may sell a certain amount of oil for food and humanitarian supplies, is slow, cumbersome and blatantly provides insufficient supplies for the people of Iraq.

This Oil for Food accord, reached between Iraq and the UN in 1996, allowed Iraq to sell $1 billion worth of oil every 90 days, with the money set aside mainly for food, medicine and compensation to Kuwait.

Ireland has tried to reduce the delays and refusals by the UN Sanctions Committee in clearing supplies contracted under this programme. Earlier this year the Taoiseach and the Minister for Foreign Affairs lobbied the US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, in Washington, for a reduction in delays on urgently needed medicines and spare parts for Iraq's infrastructure.

IN RESPONSE to pressure from Ireland and other countries, the Security Council has also unconditionally removed the ceiling on oil exports to fund the purchase of humanitarian supplies, and it has introduced an accelerated procedure for the approval of humanitarian supplies. This has resulted in $2 billion worth of food, education, medical and sanitation contracts being approved. People are still dying, though, and plainly enough is not being done.

The fact remains that these sanctions are not hurting Saddam Hussein or his regime - they are damaging the ordinary people of Iraq. Just as the Gulf War left Hussein's elite Republican Guard intact to maintain the regime, whilst destroying much of the conscripted army, these sanctions are leaving the administrative machinery of the State intact while punishing the populace at large.

The basis for the continued imposition of sanctions on Iraq, however, is its continued refusal to co-operate with the UN commissions appointed to verify the dismantling of Iraq's programme to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

Ireland has repeatedly called upon the Iraqi government to co-operate with these commissions and to comply fully with the resolutions adopted by the Security Council. This would enable a swift end to sanctions and would represent a huge step towards Iraq's return to the international community.

The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs will be pushing for such a move. We will also be assessing the extent to which sanctions are damaging the country - and hopefully we will return to Ireland with an insight based on the facts on the ground and not on political spin.