David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests to the meeting and thank them for their presentation and the unbelievable work that is going on across the world in areas of tremendous conflict. On reading one of the submissions, I was struck by the fact that teachers had to flee into the jungle because they were afraid. A couple of hundred years ago, we had hedge schools in Ireland because education was not allowed in certain circumstances. People were taught in fields, hedges and so on. What has been described today is so much worse because Covid, climate change, conflict, corruption and extreme poverty are all rolled into one in many areas, yet there are people putting their own lives at risk to deliver education.

I am struck as well by the human potential where you have girls and boys saying they want to be doctors and teachers. If the help is given they can achieve those ambitions, which is fantastic.

I am struck also by the issue of the use of sexual violence, rape, etc., and how awful that is. We had that debate last night on our national broadcaster, but I refer to the scale and extent of it there. It is used as a weapon of war. It is horrific. I am not sure what we can do about that.

Irish Aid and the NGOs are doing tremendous work. There is a lot of money being spent and we are a very small country. For many years, Irish missionaries and Irish NGOs have been respected and have been working across the world. I met many ministers from different countries in the UN a number of years ago who acknowledged that. Is there any other country out there that is doing good work that could be shown as an example of best practice so that we could look at it as well? How is the First World generally responding to the challenges and can we, in our role in the United Nations, do more to highlight what is going on?

Many people in Ireland do not realise what has been described today or do not know about it because it is not something that is highlighted here. My God, I think we live in an oasis here in Ireland compared to what was described, which, in many instances, one could say was hell on earth, and yet we have stories of success which are great to hear.

It is something that we need to do more on. Our place in the United Nations may be something we could use more to highlight this and maybe our own broadcasters here could do what they can to highlight what is going on there. I am shocked at what I have heard. I cannot even begin to imagine what some people are having to go through.

I thank our guests for being here today and say "Well done" for the work they are doing. They certainly made an impact, on me and on my colleagues as well.