Ms Gráinne O'Hara:

The Deputy certainly is not asking too much. I am here to answer the members' questions and I will do my best to do so.

I will respond first to Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan. She asked how close we are to returns. It is a difficult question to answer. There are very high aspirations for returns. It is important to understand that returns have been ongoing simultaneously with the waves of displacement I have described. By and large, it is from within the populations of internally displaced. In that situation people who were displaced stayed close to home and if the situation improves they would attempt to return. We see circular patterns of displacement and returns throughout the region. However, if the Deputy's question is about how close we are to seeing the large scale return of refugees, we are some way from that although, as I said in response to earlier questions, that is the aspiration of the vast majority of the refugees.

On the specific question about the White Helmets, it is not an organisation the UNHCR is working with directly in the sense of providing direct funding to it. However, we are very familiar with its work in Aleppo and other locations and we have seen at first hand the value of its work in attempting to save lives.

The Deputy asked about protection zones. The UNHCR has spoken publicly on this on a number of occasions. The mere declaration of a zone as a safe or protected zone by one or other party to a conflict does not make that zone materialise in a way that it could be considered viable and safe. I work for an organisation whose primary responsibility is to defend the right to asylum. The fundamental underlying component of the right to asylum is the right to be able to flee, including across international borders, if the protection of one's life and one's family's security requires that. We take a very cautious approach to the various declarations about safe zones. In previous conflicts we have had the experience of safe zones that turned out to be not very safe. I think in particular of experiences lived and lessons learned very harshly in the Balkans, so we approach the safe zone questions with much caution. However, we simultaneously welcome localised ceasefires and the pacification of areas that would allow people to remain or to return. The option of safe zones is worth exploring but the zones would have to live up to quite high international standards to be genuinely called safe zones.

On the Deputy's question about Yemen, it is a country within our area of coverage. I have been to Yemen only once but we have a considerable team working there. The crisis in Yemen is characterised more by internal displacement than by refugees. We do not see huge numbers of Yemeni refugees in the region, but the levels of internal displacement are quite massive and on a par with those in Syria and Iraq. Unfortunately, the Yemen humanitarian appeal, which I was reviewing in draft yesterday and which will soon be released, is one of the most underfunded in the region.

What we see in Yemen, in comparison with Iraq and Syria, is a humanitarian crisis that in some ways goes beyond what we see in the other two countries. I am not referring to the numbers involved but issues such as levels of malnutrition which are extremely acute in Yemen and a characteristic of the crisis that is very distressing.

The Deputy asked me a specific question about Kurdish populations. I should make clear that the UNHCR has no direct involvement with programmes in Turkey which are responding to the internal displacement of Turkish Kurds. However, we are very much involved with Kurdish populations across all of northern Syria and the Kurdish regional area of Iraq or KRI. The KRI is a location that hosts refugees - 250,000 Syrian refugees still live in the region - and is simultaneously responding to very large-scale displacement. Many of the people who have been displaced from places such as Mosul are moving either to the Kurdish region or areas on its boundaries. The authorities in the region are playing a significant role in the response to internal displacement and continuing to host refugees from Syria.

Deputy Séan Barrett's question was definitely not easy, but it merits an answer. It is not so much a question of the UNHCR not being invited to the talks but one of different roles for different parts of the United Nations within the talks. An invitation to the talks in Astana was extended to the United Nations and the UN delegation was headed by the Secretary General's special envoy, Mr. de Mistura. In reference to the political process which Mr. de Mistura leads, for which talks are anticipated to resume in Geneva in early February, the last rounds of formal talks in Geneva broke down without much success last April. While the UNHCR does not sit at the table as a party to the discussions, we are present at them.

I referred to our role and responsibility to ensure the voice of refugees was heard. Part of the Geneva talks addresses the involvement of civil society and includes refugee representatives. That is where we participate and we do so alongside the refugees. However, the UNHCR also participates based on our experience of displacement, which is not only in Syria and Iraq. Our experience stretches back to the foundation of the UNHCR in the early 1950s. We are at the talks and have a voice, but our voice is primarily humanitarian.

I hear the Deputy loud and clear and certainly do not disagree with his comments to the effect that continuing to pour money into a humanitarian response does not in and of itself bring a solution. I could not agree more that the money could arguably be far better used on reconstruction activities which will be needed when any solution starts to kick in. At the same time, when we see a final solution - a political solution - being reached, there will be a shift towards returns and reconstruction. There will still be humanitarian needs, however, and the appeal we were addressing in Helsinki, namely, the phenomenal price tag of $4.63 billion to which I have referred several times, was to pay for essential services that need to be maintained until such time as there is a full solution because these are basic services.