Ms Caitríona Ingoldsby:

I want to address some questions members asked. Deputy Brendan Smith asked about the international response. The recent adoption of the UN Security Council resolution and the establishment of the new UN mission indicate the seriousness with which the international community is treating the issue. The appointment of Dr. David Nabarro to lead the response co-ordination at the WHO and the United Nations is also a very important development. In 2005 he was the United Nations' senior co-ordinator during the avian influenza pandemic. I hope the timing is right in that this is UN General Assembly Leader's Week. The Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Charles Flanagan, is in attendance and a number of high level meetings are taking place, including one called by the UN Secretary General, as well as a transatlantic meeting hosted by the US Secretary of State, Mr. John Kerry. The European Union has announced funding of €140 million in additional development aid to go towards strengthening health systems, setting up mobile laboratories and accelerating vaccine innovation. The United Kingdom has announced that it will host an international donor conference in London at the beginning of October to further raise awareness and seek additional funding. All of these developments are pointing in the right direction and I hope we will see better international co-ordination of the response to the crisis.

Deputies Seán Crowe and Bernard J. Durkan asked about the education campaign. We absolutely agree that education in local areas is key, which is why Irish Aid has given €350,000 specifically for that purpose. This feeds into the questions about recent developments in Sierra Leone raised by Deputies Eric Byrne and Seán Crowe. I was in touch with our ambassador in Freetown this morning to ask whether the recent campaign there was successful. She said initial reports, including the results of a monitoring exercise conducted by the UN development programme, suggested the campaign was a success. It was a house-to-house sensitisation campaign and apparently 85% of households in the country had been reached with education messages and soap. That might sound simplistic, but soap is so important in the fight against ebola. There is an ebola hotline in Sierra Leone and the number of calls to the hotline increased, including calls about suspected cases and requests for assistance with burials. The ambassador's initial assessment was that the campaign had certainly been successful in galvanising local momentum in trying to curtail the outbreak.

Deputy Eric Byrne asked a question about the situation in Nigeria. Dr. Fitzpatrick has already answered it, but I would add that the main differences are scale and methods of transmission.

Mr. Gardner will deal with the question of the safety of our own staff. Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan asked about Irish Aid and the reallocation of funding. I will ask Ms Brennan to answer that question.