Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Power and his colleagues. Like the Chairman, I, too, welcome the great clarity brought by Mr. Power to this humanitarian disaster. I was struck by much of what he had to say in his presentation in terms of the number of people affected and displaced and, in particular, the following sentence: "I saw the magnitude on families and children which will forever change their lives and haunt me for a lifetime", which sums up this desperate humanitarian disaster.

I take this opportunity to welcome the Irish Government's response to date through Irish Aid and to compliment UNICEF and other Irish NGOs and their sister organisations on how quickly they responded after this disaster struck. I know from my constituency that collections at churches and collection centres last week were very good. The Filipino community in each county made it their business to link up with and support these efforts. Yesterday, when listening to an interview with a representative of the World Food Programme, I noted that 600,000 people had not yet been reached in terms of food. Mr. Power stated that millions are still hungry, which is much more alarming. I hope I am accurate in saying the figure of 600,000 was mentioned by a representative of the World Food Programme. It would not give great confidence if that is the base on which such a major organisation is working.

In terms of general commentary, there has been no mention of the major earthquake in the Philippines a month ago, by which 350,000 people were affected. The disaster prone nature of the country adds to the desperate situation there. A number of Members tabled questions on this issue to the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs during Question Time yesterday. The Tánaiste stated at the time that preparation was under way for the airlift of essential shelter and water sanitation items in the coming days. I am sure we as a committee would not have a problem in supporting Mr. Power's request for additional support.

One of the questions I put to the Tánaiste was whether the UN and its organisations have the capacity to deal with this type of crisis. During a meeting of this committee last week, Deputy Bernard Durkan asked if we ever learned from previous disasters in terms of response. I did not know until I got the Tánaiste's reply yesterday that there were so many UN organisations. There appears to be an organisation under every subheading. I imagine the response in the initial days is never as co-ordinated as it could be. Based on media reports, there has been an improvement in terms of reaching people in different regions. Does the UN have the capacity to deal effectively with this type of disaster?

We were told last week by officials from the Department that the EU was providing €25 million. Am I correct that some of this funding will be only provided in the future? There does not appear to be an urgency in terms of getting aid to the area as rapidly as possible. I hope I am wrong. We need to stress at every forum available to us the urgency with which this issue needs to be addressed. Another issue is that in one of the regions most severely affected, 90% of the people were dependent on fishing for their income and that all their equipment and boats had been smashed and broken. This means there is a huge community without a means of deriving a livelihood. Is that particular issue being addressed too? I know immediate problems are being addressed but what is being done to assist people in returning to normal living into the future?

I compliment UNICEF and all the NGOs on the excellent work being done. Mr. Power's presentation is a powerful message in regard to this huge humanitarian disaster.