Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Reference was made earlier to the fact that there are 63 million refugees worldwide. These are people living in really desperate circumstances. This 63 million is equivalent to the population of Britain and just short of the population of France. Regarding the figures Ms O'Hara quoted in her presentation in respect of Syria alone, 13.5 million people inside Syria need humanitarian assistance, 6.3 million are internally displaced, there are 4.8 million Syrian refugees and 4.6 million people live in areas that are hard to access. This is for one country alone. It is really frightening to think of the desperate situation and the huge humanitarian programme of assistance that is needed. As other members have said, and as Ms O'Hara stated earlier in her concluding remarks, we need a political solution and we need dialogue. We sincerely hope the talks that resume next month will bring some progress. In her experience in this regard with her colleagues, working daily on this situation, does Ms O'Hara see any grounds for optimism regarding progress being made this year in the region?