Mr. Kevin Kelly:

I thank the honourable members of the committee. I am the director on the humanitarian side of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. It is my pleasure to be in attendance to make a brief statement on the dreadful sudden onset crisis that hit the Philippines at the weekend. Typhoon Haiyan which made landfall across the Philippines on Friday, 8 November was the strongest typhoon in the world this year and one of the most powerful storms ever recorded. As members will be aware, it left a trail of devastation through the central islands of the Philippines. With power and telecommunications lines down and vital infrastructure destroyed, the impact of the typhoon extends beyond those areas in the immediate eye of the storm. On Monday the Government of the Philippines declared a state of calamity in Samar, Leyte, Cebu, Iloilo, Capiz, Aklan and Palawan provinces. As with all natural disasters, local authorities and communities, as well as the Philippines Red Cross, have led the initial response. Yesterday, however, the approach of a further tropical depression and anticipated heavy rainfall forced the suspension of the delivery of relief supplies to victims of the typhoon in certain areas.

While the media are reporting unconfirmed estimates of up to 10,000 deaths, the official estimated loss of life stood at between 2,000 and 2,500 as of yesterday evening's announcement by the President of the Philippines. Unfortunately, that number is likely to increase as the assessments continue. An estimated 11.3 million people across 41 provinces have been affected, representing more than 10% of the country's population, with up to 800,000 people displaced. As a nation prone to natural disasters, the Philippines has a relatively strong National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, NDRRMC. I wish to emphasise that the country's government's proactive evacuation of hundreds of thousands of citizens before the storm struck the coast is likely to have resulted in fewer deaths than may otherwise have been the case.

The response of the international community to the disaster has been rapid, with a large UN disaster assessment and co-ordination, UNDAC, team and a team of experts from the European Commission's Directorate for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection, ECHO, being deployed as early as Friday, 8 November to assist the national authorities to assess the impact of the disaster. These assessment missions have fed into the development of a UN flash appeal, launched yesterday by Baroness Valerie Amos in the Philippines. The appeal calls for funding of $301 million to cover immediate emergency relief and continued support for the affected populations during the coming six months. A lack of safe drinking water has been identified as the most immediate threat to life, with supplies having been cut off in many areas. Other high priorities include, as one would expect, the provision of shelter, health care, particularly for those with trauma injuries, the provision of food and sanitation and hygiene.

In terms of the response to date, on Monday the United Nations announced an emergency allocation of $25 million to fund critical relief efforts. This allocation came from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund, CERF, a pooled fund from which financing can be made rapidly available in the event of disasters such as this. It allows UN and NGO agencies to respond quickly to the needs of communities across the affected region. Ireland was one of the founding donors to the CERF on its establishment in 2006 and we are making efforts to maintain our support for it. We are consistently ranked among its top ten donors. Our most recent contribution was in December last year in respect of 2013 operations and amounted to €10 million. We are hoping to be in a position to make a similar contribution at the end of this year in respect of 2014. The Irish Government closely monitored the progress of Typhoon Haiyan over the course of last week and had put in place preliminary arrangements for a response prior to the storm making landfall on Friday. As a result of this preparatory action, Ireland was one of the first countries to react to this terrible disaster and our announced funding is the seventh highest stated national commitment to date.

As the scale of the destruction wreaked by the storm became evident over the weekend, our team worked to organise the airlifting of essential relief items to the value of €510,000 from our stocks in Dubai. An urgent call for proposals was issued on Sunday morning to our trusted NGO partners. It is expected that, on the basis of the proposals received by the close of business yesterday, at least €1 million will be released to support our NGO partners' relief operations, bringing the value of our total contribution to just over €1.5 million as of today. In addition, we have approved the release of €300,000 in funds that had been pre-positioned with NGO partners for sudden emergencies such as this. We expect to approve the release of a further €125,000 by the end of the week. We are also actively considering a further airlift of essential shelter items in the coming days on the basis of forthcoming needs assessments. In addition, members of Ireland's Rapid Response Corps, a roster of experienced humanitarian experts available to deploy at short notice, are on standby to assist with and fill critical gaps in the relief effort at the request of our key UN and NGO partners. We activated the corps on Sunday and 15 rapid response experts have declared themselves ready and willing to deploy. We fully expect a number of members to be deployed in the coming days on the basis of requests we receive through the mechanisms at our disposal.

I will highlight some of the many challenging facets of the response to the disaster. It is inevitable and understandable that after a few days the media will begin to highlight the difficulties involved in getting aid into a country such as the Philippines. Evidently, the damage caused to vital infrastructure, including roads, airports and telecommunications, is a critical challenge to the rapid delivery of relief items. The very geography of the Philippines, a large archipelago of more than 7,000 islands, also complicates the delivery of relief.

Last but not least, it is important to recognise the immense strain already placed on humanitarian agencies in terms of their staff capacity and on donors' humanitarian budgets by the unprecedented requirements of the response to the Syrian crisis. Just to illustrate this point, this morning I held a telephone discussion with one of our NGO partners about the dilemma facing it in terms of possibly needing to redeploy essential staff from Syria to the Philippines to meet needs there. These are the real challenges faced by agencies on the ground. The international community has learned many lessons from previous crises such as the 2004 tsunami and the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Under the leadership of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, clear systems have been put in place to ensure the most effective, efficient and rapid delivery of aid possible. Ireland has and will continue to make every effort to ensure our response is timely and effective and, within the means at our disposal, meets the most critical and urgent needs.