Mr. John Ging:

On the question of UN Staff contracts, Deputy O'Sullivan is absolutely right. When I say that the global humanitarian appeal is only 26% funded, it puts a lot of pressure on all parts of the endeavour. It means that we only have a quarter of the money we need for the food, medicine and so forth. The people who are working in the United Nations and elsewhere on the aid effort also have to adjust their budgets according to the global shortfall. For our organisation, the UN entity that co-ordinates humanitarian action, it means we have had to reduce our budget in line with the reductions that have been suffered across the entire system. It has been very tough. As one of the senior leaders in our organisation we must address this with our colleagues, all the time and every day. We would like to be in a more financially sustainable situation

I am delighted that Ireland is taking on the chairmanship of OCHA's donor support group. To have the office that co-ordinates humanitarian affairs on a more financially sustainable basis will be welcomed by everybody and it will put us into a position where we would be able to make long-term commitments to staff. We cannot make long-term commitments when we do not have the long-term funding. There is a direct correlation between being able to give a staff member a short-term contract with today's money versus having the confidence that we will have the money next year and the following year. We only get our budget each year; we do not have a multi-annual budget. We are voluntarily funded and are not like other UN entities that have an assessed contribution, which is where member states pay their percentage as long as the entity is in place. It is a different formula. The humanitarian component is every year and is voluntary. We have regular funding from countries like Ireland, but there are countries whose funding goes up and down depending on their spending decisions. We must then calculate what cadre of staff we can have on longer term contracts and what cadre of staff we must be honest with and say that we cannot guarantee that we will have the funding in the next year for their positions. Crises in different countries come and go and that is part of the emergency nature of the organisation also.

Deputy Sullivan asked about Myanmar and the Philippines. We had an annual mission in Myanmar by our leading donors involving the donors who give most money to OCHA. As the co-ordinator we invited them to come to Myanmar to see what we do there and to see that it is value for money. Myanmar does not get the same degree of attention as Syria or Yemen in respect of its humanitarian caseload. We must look at the caseload globally, not just from a numbers perspective but also with regard to the gravity of the situation and the catalogue of issues being faced. In Myanmar there are 1 million Rohingya people who, by any international measure, are living in appalling circumstances. There is also a conflict raging in Kachin in the north of the country. This has created huge displacement of people, as conflict always does. Notwithstanding the humanitarian caseload within the country, Myanmar is on a positive trajectory. In Myanmar we are endeavouring to transition from the international humanitarian effort to a more sustainable effort in partnership with its government on the development side. This is not progressing as quickly as would have hoped because the plight of the Rohingya people has been deteriorating at quite an alarming rate over the last year. Two years ago we thought we would have a smaller configuration in Myanmar but we must also react to the situation we find. We had also hoped for more progress in the north east of the country where the conflict is raging.

We have just three international staff in the Philippines. As members are aware, in December 2013 the Philippines experienced a massive and devastating cyclone

In the Philippines, we are working with the Government to build that national capacity Deputy O'Sullivan spoke about for our exit. As I said, we have now reduced the number of our international staff to just three. We rely on Philippine staff, building their capacity and transitioning that capacity over to the national structures, particularly the national disaster management structure. It is very much a matter of working with a country that is very committed to stepping up its own capacity but needs our global help in doing so. Therefore, the work we do there very much concerns the capacity-building, disaster risk reduction and preparedness for crisis that come from natural disasters. As I said, we are on an exit trajectory from the Philippines, but we do not want to have to return because we did not finish the job we should have done of building the capacity there.

Deputy O'Sullivan is absolutely right that we must be able to rationalise across the world where the international staff and limited resources we have are deployed. She is also correct that the speed of scale-up in north-east Nigeria was not what it should have been. However, while I will embrace, as one of the managers of the global effort, the responsibility and accountability for areas where we fall short, wherever they might be, I must tell the committee that with 26% funding, we will not get 100% result. It is just not possible. Therefore, if the committee's expectation is that we will deliver 100% with 26% funding, I ask it to adjust that expectation. I am not hiding behind the shortfall in funding; I am just referring to it as a starting point.

Can we do better? Yes. We have stepped up in some areas but we have also as a consequence scaled down elsewhere. Deputy O'Sullivan could also have raised with me the question why we are absent from Zimbabwe with such a high caseload and why we have exited countries across southern Africa where climate change has had a devastating effect. The answer is that we have made a calculation that those countries do not need the international presence of my organisation because they have their national capacity. They would benefit from our presence, for sure, but they do not need it. Therefore, we transition that resourcing into places such as north-east Nigeria and, as I said, we are doing that all the time because the situation there is not stable at present. We did not have at the start of the year the four famines we have now. We must scale up for those famines in an environment in which resourcing does not follow. We are not seeing the scaling up in resourcing with the scaling up of the need. Therefore, hard choices - impossible choices - must be made, and I am very grateful to Deputy O'Sullivan for raising the consequences of what happens when those choices must be made.

Yemen was an incredibly impoverished country before this most recent round of conflict. Some 80% of the food was imported. The numbers in poverty were among the highest in any country in the world. All of this has now been exacerbated by conflict. What does my organisation do in Yemen? We facilitate the working of humanitarian organisations; the composition of appeals for humanitarian action; access; engagements with the various authorities on the ground, negotiating with them to get the aid effort into the conflict-affected regions; and the provision of support to the humanitarian organisations on the whole range of operational issues they face. Most importantly, we help them with the fund-raising they need to be able to do the good work they do.

I have been through Rwanda in recent times, and it is fantastic to see a country that was completely and utterly devastated by genocide in 1994 now doing well. Economically, Rwanda is doing well. We should always recall that there are ways forward out of these awful situations. I do not want to oversimplify the politics of the situation in Rwanda or be misunderstood at all in that regard, but Deputy O'Sullivan's simple question was whether a difference can be seen. Yes, a very positive difference can be seen for people in their daily lives in a country that was completely ruined by a genocide. Again, this is why we should never give up. I also feel that sense of fatigue in hearing about crisis after crisis, but we should not get tired. We should redouble our efforts because, as I said, these crises are also in the majority of cases preventable.