Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Vice Chair accommodating me. I hope colleagues will understand that I have to leave. We all want to indicate our support before we go wherever we have to go. We want to do more than that, if we can, later. I welcome the guests. It is good that they are here and that we hear this.

As the Vice Chair said, we are hearing dramatic words. This is another step today. It is only now properly dawning on people in this country the scale of the problem in the Horn of Africa. Few people were aware of it but it is percolating down now. It is important that people know of it and understand it. The witnesses' figures, stats and video clips are shocking.

Ms McKenna stated: "While I am reading this statement,12 more people will have died in east Africa due to lack of food and related complications." All of those figures were shocking, including that the number who have experienced crisis levels of hunger is up from 181 million people in 41 countries to 345 million now. It was also stated that at one point in the Horn of Africa a person was dying from hunger every 48 seconds. A few months later, a person is dying every 36 seconds. It is no harm to read that into the record again.

This is a shocking horror story and it behoves us to do something about it. It hits education and it hits women and children more. All of those points are valid. Ms McKenna mentioned speeding up aid and the money getting out there. The committee will support that. If there is anything we can do about the matter, including going to the Minister or whatever it takes, I would be in favour of doing it. We should go on increasing the money for aid. This is an emergency and there should be an emergency payment. We have problems in Ireland but nothing in this compares with our domestic troubles so we should be supportive.

I was going to ask a few quick questions. Ms McKenna stated, "We ask Ireland to support the scale up of investment in social protection programmes and sustainable livelihoods" and "we ask Ireland to support the establishment of a loss and damage finance facility at COP27". Ms McKenna might elaborate on what exactly that is and if there is anything we could do in that regard. The rest of it is self-evident and before I finish I want to indicate my support. Any sane response to this would be that we should support the expedition of an increase in aid. We should do something about it immediately. I propose that we might go to the Minister especially on this or do whatever it takes to effect some change on it.