Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Taking Lebanon, for example, it imports the vast majority of its food. A huge proportion of that would normally have come from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Likewise, in Egypt. I stand to be corrected here, but, from memory, the UN World Food Programme would have sourced close to 60% of its wheat, which is a big part of the food stocks that is supplies, from Ukraine and Belarus. It is having to find alternative sources now. Of course, the World Food Programme is effectively the largest humanitarian organisation on the planet. The war is having big knock-on consequences in terms of the World Food Programme having to recalibrate its programmes, for example, in Yemen. We have heard David Beasley, the head of the World Food Programme, talk about having to take food from the hungry to give it to the starving. That is the kind of conversation that is taking place. These are extraordinary knock-on consequences, given the fact that we were talking about the knock-on consequences of Covid only a few months ago. The combination of the impact of Covid and the current dramatic increases in the price of essential items like food and energy means that we are going to have to recalibrate our aid programme.

There is also a commitment in the aid programme to increase the spend on climate finance. We are currently spending in the region of €90 million a year on climate finance. We have committed to increasing that figure to €225 million by 2025. That is only a few years away. The combination of doing more on climate finance, as well as doing more on healthcare, means that recalibration will be required. The impact of Covid on, for example, girls' education has been extraordinary. It has set it back nearly a decade. Many people were not allowed to go to school because of the fear of Covid spreading and so on. Many of them have not returned to school since then. We have a big investment programme in girls' education. We will rightly be forced to try to re-evaluate how we spend on food and nutrition, hunger, and I suspect, on some very serious humanitarian catastrophes in the autumn linked to the unavailability of food and the combination of price and drought. There are some pretty pessimistic predictions in terms of drought in some countries in the Horn of Africa later this year. In addition, for the first time, we have over 100 million displaced people. Many of them are in refugee camps.

I am flying to New York this evening for a UN Security Council meeting tomorrow at which we are hoping to get agreement to maintain, for another 12 months, humanitarian access through Turkey into north-western Syria, where approximately 4 million people rely almost entirely on UN operations for humanitarian assistance. Around 1,000 trucks a month were crossing into the area previously. This year, it has been about 800 a month. That is still an enormous volume. Between €150 million and €250 million worth of medical, food and humanitarian aid is going to displaced people in the Idlib province, most of whom have been displaced four, five, six, seven or ten times, having been moved on during the ongoing war in Syria. There is an enclave in north-west Syria where displaced people, who have largely either been driven out or have been trying to resist the Assad regime, are now effectively encamped. Most of them are living in tents. Only about 20% of the children there are getting any form of education at all.

Ireland and Norway have the responsibility on the UN Security Council for getting humanitarian assistance into Syria. It is one of the specific roles that we have. We are what is called a penholder in UN-speak for that file, which means that we write the relevant resolution and try to get agreement. To date, we do not have agreement with Russia to facilitate the extension of that resolution. Should it fall this week or next week, then the UN operations at the Bab al-Hawa crossing from Turkey into north-west Syria will effectively have to close. There are 4 million people there, which is almost equivalent to the population of Ireland. I know that we have a population of more than 5 million now. The population being supported by that humanitarian assistance is certainly the equivalent of all of the women and children in Ireland. That gives the members an idea of the scale of some of the things we are involved in at a UN Security Council level.

The Security Council is not always about intervening in conflicts and war. Sometimes it is very much a humanitarian role linked to conflict, in this case, in Syria. We are trying to get agreement from countries that are very sceptical as to whether or not this aid into Syria should be facilitated at all, because they think it compromises Syrian sovereignty, and so on. I agree with the Chairman. More countries will have to commit more to the food and energy security issues. The EU has already put in place a food security fund.

This is for countries across the Horn of Africa and in the Middle East. It will help to pay the difference in terms of the increase in price. We have done something with Egypt on this also because it imports a huge amount of its food. It is not only about preventing people from starving, which of course is pretty important. It is also about maintaining stability. If people cannot buy bread democratic systems collapse. If we look at the Arab spring and where and how it started, it all began over the price of bread in Tunisia and then the whole thing spread.

This is about maintaining political stability as well as nutrition and making sure people can feed themselves. I am rambling a little bit now but we are of course looking at it. It is also why, despite all of the pressures we face in the budget in terms of our own cost of living, in my view a significant increase in our development aid budget this year is more than justified. As a relatively wealthy country, we have a responsibility towards countries that are on a basic level trying to feed their populations. We have our own problems here that we need to respond to but we have a moral obligation to respond significantly on some of the global issues.