H.E. Dr. Sinéad Walsh:

That is what I was told, but I stand corrected. My presentation will focus in particular on the situation in Sierra Leone and Liberia where the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has the embassy in Freetown and a sub-office in Monrovia. Committee members will be aware that since the onset of the outbreaks last year Ireland has been centrally engaged in providing support to the Ebola response. The Minister of State, Deputy Sean Sherlock, was the first European Minister - he was even the first politician - to visit Sierra Leone during the Ebola crisis. When he met with President, Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma, the president remarked on his gesture of solidarity between Ireland and Sierra Leone.

To provide some context, just under 25,000 confirmed cases of Ebola have been reported globally. The vast majority of the infections have been in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. To date, a total of 10, 311 people have died. Even more tragically, 505 of the deaths were of health workers. I take the opportunity to pay tribute to those individuals today. In many cases, local health professionals who have been at the front line of the crisis have lost their lives in trying to save the lives of others.

In terms of an update, Liberia is now close to eradicating Ebola, although the confirmed case from last Friday is definitely a setback and we are waiting to see to what extent that confirmed case has spread. Even with Liberia being very close to the end of the outbreak, the situation in Sierra Leone and Guinea is still very serious. We still have quite a high transmission rate in Sierra Leone. We had a good drop at the beginning of this year, but in the past two months we have had a plateau. We still have very serious challenges, although last week's numbers, which came out yesterday, were encouraging. The key priority at this time is to ensure that the high level of resources that was finally built up - human, technical and material resources - is kept up in all three countries until the number of cases reaches zero.

Since the beginning of the Ebola outbreak, Ireland has provided more than €18.5 million to the affected countries in west Africa, both directly and through NGOs. We provided funding of more than €6 million to assist with the construction of Ebola treatment facilities in both Sierra Leone and Liberia, as well as funding for activities such as contact tracing and social mobilisation. This figure of €6 million includes 42 tonnes of humanitarian stocks which were air-lifted to Sierra Leone and distributed to Ebola-affected households. It also includes a contribution of €1 million to the UN Ebola trust fund established by the UN Secretary General in September.

What I really want to stress here this morning is that Ireland’s contribution to the Ebola response is not only financial. Ireland is one of only three EU member states with an embassy and aid programme in Sierra Leone. We opened an Irish Aid office in 2005, and the office was upgraded to a full embassy in January of last year. One could safely call that a baptism of fire. Since the outbreak began in Sierra Leone in late May, the Irish embassy has played a key role in policy and co-ordination of the response. As committee members will know, this outbreak was entirely unprecedented in global terms. Frankly, for the first several weeks the governments and the international community had no idea what to do, but we hung in there, as Ireland, and we helped to try to figure it out in those very uncertain times in June, July and August. In doing that we worked really closely with our colleagues both at headquarters and in missions such as Geneva, New York and Brussels to raise awareness of the enormous need for global support.

In our work on the ground, Ireland is leading on some key elements of the response, such as fleet management for ambulances, food supply and emergency nutrition. I take this opportunity today to thank my colleagues in the embassy in Freetown, some of whom committee members have met, and also in the sub-office in Monrovia for making an enormous contribution during these difficult times. The Government's team working on Ebola in west Africa is not just within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, we have been extremely fortunate since November to have 11 members of the Defence Forces in Sierra Leone, six individuals at various times who have worked within the embassy and five medical personnel working with the UK joint task force on Ebola. It is my first experience of working closely with Defence Forces personnel and it is an amazing example of what a cross-governmental contribution on Ebola can achieve in a crisis situation. I also thank the Defence Forces and the Department of Defence for that excellent collaboration. One of the tasks of the Defence Forces personnel is to provide technical support to Concern and Goal. I wish to highlight those organisations for the huge contribution they are making through running treatment centres and organising safe burials. In combatting Ebola, they have really stepped up and entered into new areas where they previously had little expertise.

I am very proud of the way that these Irish organisations have managed to make a contribution under those circumstances. They are joined by many other organisations with offices in Ireland such as Trócaire, Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF, World Vision, Red Cross, Plan, Oxfam, Christian Aid and so on, all of which are making important contributions to the response. The Irish team working on fighting Ebola in West Africa includes many individuals, some from the HSE and some from other organisations who have gone to volunteer for different organisations during the crisis. While so many lives have been and continue to be lost through Ebola, we must remember that many lives have also been saved. This is in no small park thanks to the perseverance of many individuals and I am very proud to say that a disproportionate number of these individuals have been Irish. Through our people, as well as through our funds, we are helping to defeat the Ebola virus.

I would like to say a few words about the crucial role the Europe Union has played in mobilising €1.2 billion in financial aid from member states and from the Commission and also in terms of political commitment and human resources. Committee members may recall that at the outset of the crisis we had a huge challenge in mobilising international health personnel because we did not have a medical evacuation facility. The EU set up such a facility for international health workers and this went a long way to allay concerns of prospective volunteers and helped us to mobilise these resources.

The final point I would make is that the Ebola crisis is only one of the killers in these West African countries this year. In Sierra Leone, for example, recent statistics predict that there will be a 20% increase in infant mortality due to Ebola. It is not that 20% more children are dying from Ebola but they are dying because they cannot access the regular health care system due to Ebola and the impact it has had on the health care system. This is a 20% increase in infant mortality in a country where already one in five children dies before the age of five. This is a crisis in itself, the secondary crisis that has been caused by Ebola. The restoration and rehabilitation of the normal health systems is daunting but it is an absolutely urgent task.

In 2014 Ireland donated €10 million to our annual development programmes in our partner countries and the primary focus of those programmes is health and nutrition and health systems strengthening. I would also add that the secondary crisis in these countries goes far beyond the health system. Colleagues will be aware that children have lost a whole year of school; farmers' incomes have plummeted perhaps by 50%; hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost, 180,000 in Sierra Leone, for example; and the economies of the sub-region have taken a huge hit. Irish Aid programming in both countries through 2015 will continue to focus on the response but also very much on these secondary impacts in areas such as food security, gender and health.

Lessons will need to be drawn from the Ebola crisis to inform the ongoing development programming because key weaknesses have been exposed. Importantly, the Ebola crisis has exposed significant governance challenges, including corruption, gaps in decentralisation processes, and now is the time for the governments of Sierra Leone and Liberia to make real progress on those issues and not go back to business as usual. The good news from my perspective is that Ireland is committed to continuing to work in Sierra Leone and Liberia and will support those two countries in tackling those difficult systemic issues. It will also continue to help with vital services in the short term in areas such as health and nutrition and in helping those countries to defeat the Ebola virus.

I thank the members very much for the opportunity to come in here this morning. As the Chairman said, the media have moved on from coverage of the crisis but it has not ended. I appreciate the members giving of their time this morning and I would be pleased to take any questions they may have.