Ms Suzanne Keatinge:

I thank Ms Van Lieshout. In some very brief closing remarks, I want to thank the committee for giving us this chance to share with it some of these stories. We are all very much on the same page in that we cannot afford to allow Covid-19 to get in the way of the urgent issue of gender equality. As has been stated, Covid-19 has exacerbated and accelerated the trends. There is a real urgency around this issue.

I also thank the Dóchas members for sharing some of their stories and these very stark facts. As Ms Taylor said, there have been 13 million more child marriages as a result of Covid-19 over a 12-month period, which is just extraordinary. Ms Abbas said that there is an entire generation at risk in Jordan and in the Middle East in general because of a lack of education. We know that many of those girls will not go back to education at all. That potential of those women and girls is lost for an entire generation.

We also heard from Christian Aid about the impact of conflict. I am aware that the committee had a session on Syria where the issue of gender-based violence and the use of women as weapons of war was very starkly put forward during those sessions.

We also heard that we cannot afford the luxury of being overwhelmed by this. As Deputy Clarke said so well, we know that women are going to be the backbone of the recovery. For that to happen, they need to be at the table and to be those leaders we have seen in our own communities. We need to find the way and the space to bring them to the table and to hear their voices.

I will make one positive comment about the pandemic in that it has allowed the committee to be here this morning to hear different voices from the field and from the wide range of Dóchas's NGOs, which I really appreciate. Let us hope that we can keep doing that more. The solution is going to come from these conversations by bringing different people together. We can see that with that stronger collaboration, I genuinely believe that we can go faster and make that difference.

The outcome that I needed from the session today was to hear from the committee members that they will be our champions on gender equality, on the SDGs and on the importance of ODA and Irish Aid's work.

I hope the committee members will go away with some practical takeaways. We are very open to exploring more and I reiterate the idea concerning the SDGs and the Spotlight report, and there being some more practical and specific things we can work on together. We are happy to carry on that conversation. I also refer to the informal session we had with the committee last week. We ran out of time then, but I hope the members will agree that one of the key things we put on the table and one of the key policy asks of Dóchas members was gender. There were many more concerns, however, so I hope we will get the chance to work with the committee members in that regard.

More importantly, I hope today the members got a sense of the important role that Irish NGOs are playing, as well as the important role of the diversity of the Dóchas membership. My team and I are here and available if the committee members have questions and if there are issues that they want to tackle more and bring such a conversation together. We are grateful for this opportunity this morning and let us hope we can continue this partnership.

I thank the members of the committee and all the panellists at this morning's session.