Mr. Maurice Sadlier:

I will add to Ms van Lieshout’s comments. I have a figure but I would not generalise the figure. It is from a very discreet piece of work in north-west Syria where 25% of women interviewed said they had witnessed GBV but only 9% reported that they had been victims of it. It is very problematic. I think it is far higher than either of those figures. A place such as north-west Syria has multiple issues, including cultural issues, lack of accountability and lack of services. I mentioned that I have been to South Sudan. I have been to places in the middle of nowhere where it is pointless. There are no police services and no health services - there is nothing. That is what we do on the ground. We are building these services and trying to make those connections.

On the exploitation of children, we work at community and national levels. We leave the reunification and repatriation stuff to the UN agencies. Ireland is one of the strongest donors around education and protection programming. I spoke to my colleagues across a number of countries as part of a piece of work we did recently. When I asked them why they were not asking me for money for food - we know that food and climate change are big issues - I was told the reason was that Ireland funds protection but no other donors do so. Protection at a community level is vital.

When I was looking through my notes this morning from my last trip to South Sudan, I was reminded that one of the kids said that peace comes from education. That answers many of the questions that Deputy Clarke asked. For me, it is accountability and education. Until we have accountability from the ground up and implementation from the top down, we will not see anything. We have many international agreements and national laws, but we will only see changes when local communities and local citizenry can hold their governments to account.

In the climate sphere, we have a programme that is implemented in Galway and in Tanzania around holding local government to account on climate action. That is the sort of work I really enjoy. I have just finished a piece of work with the Philippines on a similar process. We need local communities to be able to hold their governments to account for delivery of services and plans. Deputies may not always enjoy being held to account or being shouted at by people outside the Dáil but ultimately that is what I would like to see in many of the places we work. I want people to be free and able to hold their governments to account. That is where we will actually make progress and reach things.

On the conflict around climate change and resources, we have not been able to travel very much in the past few years. South Sudan was my most recent trip. Food is a problem. The World Food Programme, through World Vision, is distributing food. People in internally displaced camps are getting food parcels, but people in local host communities are not. They have equal challenges. Climate change is impacting the lives of both groups equally. There is conflict between host communities and internally displaced persons, so much so that host communities can refuse land rights or fishing rights to those who are internally displaced. Such conflict often happens, although not always to this extent. They are no longer allowed to grow crops or to fish. It is causing friction between communities. We have seen that when resources pass through communities in northern Uganda to South Sudan or northern Kenya, there is conflict for water and grazing rights, etc. Where resources are more scarce, we are seeing increased intercommunal violence around those issues.