Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Dr. Erakat for joining us, and I hope that notwithstanding time pressures, she is in a position to remain with us for an hour. I thank her for her most graphic presentation. I have had the experience of driving by car from Jerusalem to Jericho, the Dead Sea, across the Allenby Bridge into Jordan and Amman. It is a most beautiful part of the world. It is tragic to see it engulfed in the type of conflict to which she made reference.

I thank Mr. Meehan and Ambassador Abdalmajid for remaining with us. I will now invite members to pose their questions and make observations. There is a lot of information before the committee by way of the presentations. I remind members of the time constraint and ask that they be as concise as possible in their questions. I will confine them to a maximum of seven minutes, but they are free to share their slot with party colleagues. The first speaker is Deputy John Brady, followed by Senator Joe O'Reilly and I, again, ask them to be conscious of the time because I know that our experts are keen to deal with members' queries and to engage further with us over the next hour or more.