Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Power for his powerful presentation and members for their powerful questions. It is an issue to which we will return in the coming weeks. I agree that we must learn from what happened in Haiti. I remember Mr. Power visiting that country when he was Minister of State. As I also recall, large amounts of money were pledged in the aftermath of that disaster, but some donors failed subsequently to cough up what was promised. I agree that once the images of the tragedy in the Philippines disappear from the television screens, the story will also disappear. There is a huge rebuilding effort to be undertaken and we wish Mr. Power and his colleagues at UNICEF well in their work, as we do all the other NGOs.

We will keep the reconstruction of the Philippines on the agenda for our work programme in 2014. The similarities with Haiti are powerful, given that the typhoon in the Philippines was almost twice as bad as what happened in Haiti. We hope the donations will keep flowing in to help the Filipino Government, the UN agencies and the NGOs to rebuild the lives of the Filipino people in the islands that were devastated by the typhoon.

I thank the witnesses for attending the meeting. We expect to keep in touch with them about UNICEF's activities.