Mr. Dualta Roughneen:

I will respond to something Mr. Gaffey said but first I will talk about co-operation. There is a lot of co-operation among international NGOs, but sometimes it is too much and we nearly have too many meetings. There is a disability inclusion development working group here in Ireland and a number of NGOs are a part of that, including CBM Global. Mr. Kabir is a co-chair. We discuss and engage with Irish Aid at those meetings as well. Irish Aid's disability programme person was at the meeting last week. There is a lot of overlap in the engagement and discussion. We also work with other international NGOs, INGOs. Some of us are currently working with Trócaire on a piece of work to bring disability inclusion into Trócaire's work more generally. CBM Global has an inclusion advisory group that works with the UN at different levels. The group has been brought in to support UNICEF in Nepal on bringing disability inclusion into their work, and with the World Food Programme on some of their larger pieces of work. It is the largest UN agency in terms of the scale of work it does. There is a lot of co-operation in trying to add value and not do everything independently and all by ourselves.

Reference was made to the tsunami. We talked about the horror of it and the same issues arising when a new rapid onset emergency happens whereby people disabilities do get left behind. Sometimes it is so difficult to prepare for something like a tsunami hitting. How does one solve that problem without asking people to make the decision of fleeing themselves or bringing other people with them? It is such a difficult philosophical decision, never mind an ethical and moral one. There is progress in those areas. UN Security Council Resolution 2475 talks about the protection of people with disabilities in conflict. It creates particular commitments on the part of governments and on behalf of actors in the conflict to respect the rights of people with disabilities, to not target them etc. There are also Inter-Agency Standing Committee, IASC, guidelines on the humanitarian response for people with disabilities in that response in order that they are not ignored, are part of that response, are not just considered as objects to receive benefit from that response, are involved in the discussions around how the humanitarian response in an emergency is shaped and framed and in what gets prioritised and are involved in how their needs are met in the humanitarian response. A lot of things are happening. They happen incrementally sometimes but we are seeing improvements and changes.

It is great for Irish Aid to have that position on some of the UN boards as well to be able to influence but from our perspective as well, we feel that over the last number of years the percentage of official development assistance to international NGOs has dropped even though the overall budget is increasing. We would like to see that trend somehow reversed so this percentage is at least maintained and increased for the NGO partners.

They are the ones Irish Aid can influence more concretely because they have that direct relationship, whereas you are on a board when it comes to UN pooled funding. We definitely appreciate being influenced by Irish Aid if we are being influenced in the right direction. Definitely, protecting the funding for international NGOs in the overseas aid budget is hugely important.