Mr. Barry Andrews:

I thank the Chairman. On the first question, the treatment centre that was opened at the weekend in Freetown is, in fact, a Sierra Leone run centre. To the best of my knowledge, the local ministry is involved in that. That is a strong local response and it has to be acknowledged. There is no doubt that the local administration is doing everything within its power and deploying all the resources at its call to contain the transmission of the illness.

Obviously, I defer to Dr. Fitzpatrick on the vast majority of these questions. Ms O'Reilly might want to come in as well. It is a fact that every 30 days delay in funding will double the cost in the requirement of medical staff. Some 70% of cases need to be hospitalised and at present less than 40% are. It takes six weeks at a minimum to build a medical treatment centre. Therefore, mathematics tells one that it is out of control. It is hard to catch up with it. Therefore, people are thinking in terms of care in the community. That is a developing area.

The WHO designated this as a public health emergency of international concern on 8 August, and since then much has happened in terms of our understanding and the dimensions and projections. The NHS has developed a response and has created a web portal for anybody interested in volunteering, and no doubt the HSE could do something similar.

As to the question about the safety of individuals who volunteer, aid workers work in difficult circumstances, not only in Sierra Leone but in the massive humanitarian responses in Syria and the famine conditions in South Sudan. These all are challenging conditions and aid workers put themselves in those circumstances because of vocation and their commitment to their work. We manage risk to the best of our ability. We cannot eliminate risk in those circumstance and volunteers understand that to be the case.

Deputy Crowe asked the question about the role of education. MSF, as I said, is at the sharp end of this in terms of treatment, but we also need to have the educational element because it is counter-intuitive to talk about not touching and caring for a dying relative. It runs completely against any human instinct anybody has. It is a cultural norm not only of west Africa. It is the same everywhere. It is a considerable challenge to break down that cultural practice. That is one of the key jobs GOAL has been doing over the past three or four months, since May when the outbreak began. There are more details about that in our submission to the committee today.

Deputy Crowe asked a tough question as to why we NGOs are not doing the work, that MSF put it up to us and we should lift our game. We are trying to do that. We see that the dimensions of it are much greater than probably earlier anticipated and we do not shrink back from that call. Deputy Eric Byrne asked about the conditions and I will let Dr. Fitzpatrick deal with that.

On the question from Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan on Irish Aid funding being reallocated, such reallocation is useful. Effectively, the longer-term development work that the committee might have seen when it visited two years ago is more or less suspended at present. It will be useful for GOAL, Concern and the other agencies which are funded through Irish Aid if that can be allocated now to this particular response because we are building isolation units where the diagnoses take place. If an individual is diagnosed with ebola, he or she is sent to the treatment centres. At present, however, these centres are full. Any funding we can get access to will assist us in that work of building isolation centres.