Mr. Paul O'Brien:

I thank the Cathaoirleach for the opportunity, as well as Ms McKenna. I also thank the members for their questions. It is great to hear that there is such receptivity to the issues we are raising, even though many of us feel quite powerless in this situation. We are extremely proud of Irish overseas aid development, the work done by Irish Aid and the way Irish Aid acts as a donor. We do not have tied aid and we have great flexibility. Even at the time of Covid, Irish Aid showed great flexibility in allowing the agencies to repurpose money in order to deal with the Covid crisis.

I also want to talk about the hunger crisis. I am 37 years in the sector at this stage. I went to Kenya in the mid-1980s, which seems fadó fadó, as my daughter would say to me. This is the worst crisis we have faced. I do not ever remember a crisis cutting right across the whole of Africa. Ms Sidi spoke about west Africa and we are talking about the Horn of Africa, east Africa and the Sahel. We did not even mention Afghanistan and women. We have not even mentioned places like Haiti and so on. I do not think we have ever seen a crisis as large at a time when aid budgets across many countries are under so much pressure. We have talked about the Ukraine crisis, the availability of wheat and oil and what that has done for food availability. There is also the money issue. A lot of European donors are cutting their overseas aid budgets and doing exactly as people feared by putting the money into dealing with the Ukrainian refugee crisis in their countries. That has a worrying impact. The numbers are so great there and that is the big challenge.

What we are starting to talk about here is also very interesting. It is a question of empathy. Are we losing our empathy as a nation? I am very encouraged by the words I am hearing from the members of this committee but there is an issue with the media. There has been a huge focus on Ukraine. It is impossible for us as aid agencies to get the media to look at this crisis and present it as the crisis it is, that is, one of the biggest crises to face us in our generation.

It is very easy to go into the millions of people and children so I might give some anecdotal evidence instead. I was talking to our country director in Somalia yesterday and she told me stories of women having to make choices as to which child they feed that day. I have never heard that before. I have also heard of young girls being very worried when they see their mothers having a chat with a man on the street, because they are worried that conversation will revert to marriage and that they will be married off before the night is done. We are seeing those coping mechanisms coming into play. Ms Sidi has talked about the length of the hunger season and things coming earlier. We are seeing coping mechanisms coming much earlier. We have a massive crisis on our hands. In previous crises, we were confident that if we got the money we might be able to deal with them. With this crisis, we are not so confident because the price of food is going up and the availability is going down. When we look at famine in different countries, we always look at two issues. One is access to food. Sometimes by putting cash in people's hands, they can go and buy food. The other issue is availability and whether food is available on the local market. It is about getting the combination of those two things right. People have to have access through money in their pockets but food also has to be available at a price that is reasonable for people.

I could go on about the hunger season because it is a very interesting question. Ms Sidi will talk about that as well. In my 37 years, people talking about a hunger season is something we got used to. The hunger season is essentially the time between the last harvest and the new harvest coming in. People in different places have coping mechanisms to deal with that. In some places I have seen people resort to making local brew and things like that to numb the hunger at that period. In some places that period is getting longer for people.

I know there are questions around the sustainable development goals, SDGs. For us as agencies the SDGs have almost gone off the agenda a bit. I hate saying that because they are so important. That is probably because we have realised we are going to struggle to meet those exact ones that were mentioned, namely, goals 1, 2 and 5. Those are the ones relating to eradicating poverty and hunger and getting gender equality. I saw a figure recently stating that it will take 137 years to get gender equality at the current pace of progress. I am sorry I could not be more positive but that is the reality we are facing and dealing with at the moment.