Ms Caitríona Ingoldsby:

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade welcomes this opportunity to brief the committee on the ongoing work being undertaken across the Department in response to the current outbreak of ebola in west Africa. The Chairman mentioned some of the figures but I will talk about the official figures from the World Health Organization, WHO. As of 20 September, the WHO reports that the total number of probable, confirmed and suspected cases of ebola in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone was 5,843, with 1,680 confirmed ebola related deaths and a further 1,123 deaths where ebola is the suspected or probable cause. That brings the total of probable, suspected or confirmed ebola related deaths in those three countries to 2,803. Both Senegal and Nigeria have also reported cases, but it should be noted that according to the WHO, the pattern in those countries is different. It is not one of widespread and intense transmission but rather cases of localised transmission that are linked in a transmission chain to individuals who previously were in Guinea or Liberia.
Separately, there is also a smaller outbreak of ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There are 68 cases there as of 18 September, but this outbreak is unrelated to that affecting the west African countries, and it is that outbreak in the west African countries which poses the greatest risks and remains the clear priority for international action.
Given the complexities and the wide range of issues the ebola outbreak entails, the response of our Department to date has involved significant internal co-ordination across various divisions in our headquarters in Dublin, with multiple bilateral embassies, and our representatives in multilateral missions such as the UN in Geneva. In terms of our external co-ordination, we are also working domestically with our colleagues across Government Departments and State agencies, particularly with our colleagues in the Department of Health and the Health Service Executive. We are also maintaining close contact with Irish NGOs and other organisations that are active in the region. Internationally, we are actively engaged principally with EU partners, both bilaterally and through our Permanent Representation in Brussels, and through the UN system in New York and Geneva.
In terms of our Department's specific response, we can view it as being across two main pillars: the consular response and our development co-operation response. In terms of our consular response, we are asking all Irish citizens in the affected area to register on our citizens' registration page on the Department's website at . While this is a voluntary registration mechanism and may not represent an absolutely accurate total of the number of Irish citizens in the area at a given time, we are constantly monitoring those numbers as they change and using that information to inform both our internal co-ordination and the risk assessment element of wider domestic interdepartmental emergency planning. It should be said that none of the most affected countries or areas are frequented by large numbers of Irish tourists or independent travellers. As of yesterday evening, based on our citizens' register and embassy information, we have 50 Irish citizens in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. Separately, in Nigeria and in Senegal, we have a total of 405 citizens, 165 of whom would be deemed to be in an affected area. However, I would stress the point made earlier that the WHO deems the situation and level of risk in Nigeria as fundamentally different from that in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, and also that the number in an affected area in Nigeria appears high because the city of Lagos is deemed an affected area.
Our embassies in Freetown and Abuja are in ongoing contact with those citizens registered, and have issued clear advice to them based on updates to our travel advice and the WHO guidelines to ensure that they are aware of the precautions necessary to best ensure their health and safety.
In addition to their role in keeping Irish citizens in the area informed, more broadly, our missions in the area are playing a crucial role in information gathering, reporting and co-ordinating with local and international partners on the ground. Our embassy in Freetown in particular is playing a key role in local co-ordination. Colleagues there are working closely with the local authorities and international partners to identify the type of assistance most needed to try to manage the current outbreak, to support the local health and government infrastructure, and to prevent further spread of the virus.
With regard to the Department’s travel advice more generally, we continue to update the travel advice for the affected countries. Again, this advice is firmly based on WHO guidelines and information we are receiving from a number of sources, including our missions on the ground and information from EU and other international partners.

We are advising Irish citizens to avoid all non-essential travel to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea and we are advising those who are already in these countries to consider carefully their need to remain. It should be said that, according to the WHO, the risk for a general traveller to the affected area of becoming infected with the ebola virus is extremely low and that health workers can protect themselves by properly applying infection prevention and control measures when caring for patients. From the consular point of view, in addition to this threat of ebola, even if it is at a low level for our citizens, the outbreak brings further challenges in the region, including restrictions on travel and, perhaps more importantly, significant strain on the local health care systems, which are now completely overwhelmed. Any medical emergency for an Irish citizen there for which medical treatment might ordinarily have been obtained locally could now have much more severe consequences. Improving local medical facilities and building additional capacity in-country is a key priority for the international community in managing the current outbreak and curtailing its spread. I will return to this aspect in a few minutes in the context of our development co-operation response, but it is probably worth noting, with regard to our consular response, that building additional treatment capacity on the ground in these areas would also have a knock-on positive impact from the point of view of protecting the welfare of any of our citizens who are there. As part of the ongoing interdepartmental engagement, we are working with colleagues in other Departments to examine all possible options and to have protocols in place to ensure preparedness should a case arise in respect of an Irish citizen.

At EU level, the European Council of 30 August discussed the ebola crisis and called for "increased coordination at EU level of the assistance provided by EU Member States". The Commission has been tasked with taking this EU co-ordination forward, including the co-ordination of assets that could support the evacuation of ebola-linked cases from the region. EU partners have also been considering a French proposal for a co-ordinated EU response to medical evacuation and for the sharing of resources, expertise and information. Under this proposal, countries with repatriation capacity will take the lead in possible evacuations on a rota basis. In the meantime, pending the agreement of a co-ordinated EU response in respect of repatriation, we are also discussing possibilities for bilateral cooperation with international partners which have suitable repatriation capacity.

It is important to note that any proposed repatriation of an ill EU citizen would be a complex task requiring significant and close co-ordination between a number of actors both domestic and international. First and foremost, we would be governed by the medical situation. There are stringent WHO criteria in place around repatriations and each case would be different in terms of the gestation of the illness at the time the patient presented and the timeframe within which a repatriation could take place. Such consideration would include complex factors such as the availability of necessary isolation units, medical teams and aircraft capacity and the local transport and infrastructural capacity in the particular area at the time.

I now move on to our development co-operation response. Ireland has provided direct funding of €350,000 to date to organisations working on the ebola response in Sierra Leone and Liberia, both of which are partner countries for Ireland. This funding is supporting much-needed NGO-led awareness-raising programmes in local communities in affected areas. The lack of such awareness in both countries has hampered response efforts and contributed to the spread of the virus. Funding has also been provided to the Liberian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare for contact tracing, which is another very important aspect of the response. This funding is in addition to Irish Aid's ongoing programmes in both countries. In 2013, Ireland provided €3.9 million in bilateral aid to Sierra Leone, with over €2 million spent on health and nutrition programmes. In the same year, Ireland provided €5.6 million in bilateral aid to Liberia. The largest part of this funding - €4 million - was channelled through the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare for strengthening basic health and primary health care services. In addition to bilateral aid, Ireland provides funding of approximately €6.8 million per annum for long-term development assistance to NGOs, as well as Irish missionaries, in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. This supports programmes in the areas of health, food and livelihoods, education and human rights. Irish Aid is currently adopting a flexible approach in these countries to facilitate reallocation of funds towards the ebola crisis.

At the weekend, the Minister of State with responsibility for development, trade promotion and North-South co-operation announced an allocation of over €600,000 to UNICEF to provide life-saving nutritional supplies for children affected by the ebola outbreak. He also announced that over 42 tonnes of Irish stocks of practical items such as blankets and soap, to a total value of €350,000, will be airlifted from the UN humanitarian response depot in Ghana for distribution by the World Food Programme, Goal and Concern to assist survivors of ebola and affected children in Sierra Leone. A member of the Irish Aid rapid response corps was also deployed at the weekend to Dakar in Senegal to work with the World Food Programme to set up an air transit centre for use by the UN Humanitarian Air Service.

Ireland is also contributing much-needed human resources. Through the Department of Health, two public health specialists were deployed to work with the WHO to assist efforts in both Liberia and Nigeria. An Irish virologist is based in Guinea working under the auspices of the EU and another Irish public health specialist, Dr. Gabriel Fitzpatrick, whom the committee will hear from later on, has recently returned from working in a treatment unit in Sierra Leone with Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF. We remain in ongoing contact with Irish and international NGOs and earlier this week hosted in our Department a well-attended briefing for NGOs on the ebola crisis.

At the UN, Ireland co-sponsored the Security Council resolution adopted on 19 September which called for co-ordinated action to combat the crisis and established a new UN mission, the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response. Ireland very much welcomes this mission, which has five priorities: stopping the spread of ebola, providing treatment for affected people, supporting health and other public services in the three affected countries, maintaining stability in these countries and taking preventative action to forestall a recurrence. The global response to the current ebola outbreak is on the agenda for a number of high-level meetings during the UN General Assembly Leader's Week this week, for which the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade has travelled to New York.

Hopefully, this gives the committee a good overview of where we are and what the Department has done so far. We will continue to work with our missions in the area, with our international and EU partners, with our colleagues in other Departments and domestic agencies and with Irish aid organisations to ensure that Ireland's development co-operation and consular responses continue to be part of the co-ordinated international response at this time of acute need in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea in particular.