Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses and thank them for their great work. I was interested in what they were saying about the need for charities regulation, which I do not think anyone would deny at this stage. Since the recent scandals and revelations, has Mr. Meehan noticed a drop in their fund-raising efforts? I am not sure what percentage of Trócaire's income comes from fund-raising, although I think I have seen it published somewhere. Has it impacted on the organisation? I know that is not the only reason to have the legislation. It is absolutely essential.
I completely agree with the points made about climate change, but in a global recession it is almost inevitable that the focus on climate change would disappear. Mr. Meehan spoke about those most responsible for causing it, and I agree that we have to take personal responsibility for it, but places like America are now changing to an even dirtier form of fossil fuel. They have so much of it that there will be no constraint on its use. Given the winter they have had, they might be persuaded that there is some truth in climate change. Perhaps some good will come out of it.
I absolutely agree with Mr. Meehan that what is happening in Palestine is really tragic. I got the same questions from the Israeli embassy and I can understand why they are asking these questions. Nobody is suggesting that the Palestinian Authority has given the most wonderful leadership. I am sure there are abuses going on in Gaza, but if I lived in Gaza, I would be radicalised as well. Trócaire is looking for a boycott of Jewish communities operating in the occupied territories in the West Bank. They make the point that there are 23,000 Palestinian workers there, but if people moved into my front garden and set up a shop and tried to justify it by telling me they were going to give me a job in the shop, I would not be terribly impressed. These arguments just do not stand up. I was there many years ago when the Oslo Accords seemed to offer some hope to the people there. I can understand that they would be utterly disillusioned at this stage and I hope the talks produce something for them.
In respect of Syria, I was thinking that 90 refugees is a pitiful numbers, given the huge scale of that problem, but even if we were to double it, that is still a drop in the ocean. Mr. Meehan is absolutely right in saying that the only solution to this is a peace agreement, regardless of the agenda behind it. This is important not just for the people trapped in Syria, because the refugees can never be assimilated into their current host countries. The richer countries like Ireland will never take enough of them to solve the problem, and the economic status of the countries they are in does not permit it. What can we do in the meantime to ameliorate the conditions that exist in the refugee camps? I know Trócaire is working in them. I was reading in The Guardianyesterday about the impact the conflict is having on women, with a huge increase in the number of deaths of women in child birth, of babies dying, and of violence against women, even from their own husbands due to the stress of the conditions in which they are living. Is there any way of shaming the states into meeting their commitments? Is there anything we can do in that respect? It seems to be an horrendous situation in Syria.