Mr. Barry Andrews:

I thank the Chairman and members for the invitation to brief the committee this afternoon on GOAL's programmes in South Sudan and the position generally in that country. I want to start by extending our condolences, as an aid agency, on the occasion of the death of a British aid worker in Juba last night. The full details of that have not emerged just yet, but it has been confirmed by the Foreign Office that an aid worker from the UK was killed last night in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, and we extend our condolences to his family. It underlines the dangers that many of our aid workers are exposed to regularly throughout the world and the bravery they bring to the discharge of their functions. This also applies to the local aid workers we employ. The work so many of them do is completely selfless and highly motivated. I am sorry to start on this, but I think it is important to note that event.

I thank the committee for coming to see the GOAL Syria programmes last week. Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan and the Chairman, Deputy Pat Breen, came over to GOAL Syria to look at our programmes from our base in Turkey. From my point of view, it was a very interesting trip. As Deputy O'Sullivan will know, we saw some very harrowing scenes in relation to the conditions that many Syrians living outside Syria have to put up with at the moment - those who are not in refugee camps at present. There will be opportunities for GOAL and other NGOs to try to meet some of the need.

I am joined by Conor Elliott, our director of international programmes. He has extensive experience of Sudan and South Sudan and he will give a full account of our current work in South Sudan and how things are looking.

I want to create some context. In terms of humanitarian crises, 2014 has been an exceptional year. It is very easy to lose heart or to lose interest because of the number of crises. There is a record number of humanitarian crises going on at the moment. Level 3, L3, is the most extreme crisis and there are four L3 crises going on at present, and that does not include West Africa and the Ebola situation. Obviously there will be serious funding issues due to the large number of crises going on at the same time. For example, the World Food Programme has started rationing in Lebanon in relation to refugees from Syria living there. Rations have been cut by half. This is a downstream consequence of the large number of humanitarian crises happening around the world right now. It has a direct impact on young people who have lost out on their educational opportunities and are now facing other, absolutely unacceptable, hardships. It is also worth noting that in the next few years the population of the world will grow from 7 billion to 9 billion.

Those people are not going to live in Dublin, London or Washington but in Kinshasa, Mumbai, Lahore and places where people have not wished to live up to now. They will live in hillsides, river deltas, perhaps reclaimed land, flood plains - places that are particularly vulnerable to climate events. We also know there are going to be more intense and more regular climate events in the next 20 or 30 years. We have a humanitarian system under extreme strain. We have to see that there are daily consequences for vulnerable individuals who have suffered as a result of conflict or natural disasters.

Although I could say that to any western European parliamentary committee, it is particularly significant for an Irish one because we hold a lot of clout - what is called soft power - and are a real, persuasive influence in large fora like the European Union and the UN, out of all proportion to our size. That power is something we can use for the benefit of the people we are talking about. We have built it up over many generations because of our emigrant population, our missions and our NGOs. As we stand here in 2015, the question is, are we going to continue that tradition, and if so, how are we going to do it? It is not just about funding, but also how we leverage influence in different contexts. The soft power we hold is critical to our business communities, who look to invest and set up companies overseas, and we have to make sure we protect that. Next year we will have the World Humanitarian Summit and one of the challenges I would put to the committee is that we really want to put a distinct Irish stamp on it. There will be a meeting at the end of May this year where the opportunity will arise here in Dublin to begin to develop our narrative of how we will input into the summit.

GOAL has been growing very dramatically over the past few years. We released our 2014 results yesterday, which show that we increased our spend from €70 million in 2013 to €105 million in 2014, which reflects the large number of humanitarian crises that are taking place. Our budget for 2015 is €170 million. A very dramatic and exponential growth can be seen as result of those crises.

I will come back in at the end of Mr. Elliott's presentation and look forward to any questions.