Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 24 June 2021

Public Accounts Committee

2018 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Chapter 8 - Control of Humanitarian Assistance Funding
2019 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 27 - International Co-operation
Vote 28 - Foreign Affairs and Trade

9:30 am

Photo of Cormac DevlinCormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses and thank them for their opening statement. First, I wish Mr. Burgess well in his next endeavours. Starting with the positive, I pay tribute to him and his staff for the wonderful information they disseminate on social media. Mr. Burgess leads from the top in that regard. He is very active on Twitter and that applies across the various missions across the globe. I congratulate him on the work he has done.

I also pay tribute to the staff in the various diplomatic missions across the world for their support to Irish citizens in the face of the pandemic. From early 2020 all of us parliamentarians were engaging with the Department and the work it did and support it gave to citizens in need of sometimes just simple information, but also with regard to repatriation. On that point, does Mr. Burgess have a number? He may have said it in the opening statement and I did not catch it. Does he have the number of people the Department assisted in terms of repatriation from early 2020 and the cost associated with that? That is my first question.

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