Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair for his very good comments and remarks. He mentioned his visit to Morocco and that he found great acknowledgement and appreciation of the effort Ireland has made. It is good to hear that being said here at home. He also mentioned the great work by Ambassador McIntyre out there.

Our mission is to increase the number of embassies we have around the world. The most recent one was in Senegal in western Africa and, prior to that, in Morocco. We are working on an ongoing basis to increase our representation in as many countries as we can.

Ukraine was mentioned and a question was asked about how many people we have there. We have a maximum of four staff who are on rotation.

The triple lock was also mentioned. The commitment is to commence the preparation of the legislative proposals immediately, with a view to proposals being brought to the Government in due course. There is no exact timetable on that at this point but the effort is being made to work on that legislation to bring it to the Government. No time limit has been put on it either.

The important issue of Gaza was raised, as was the funding that is going there and how we ensure that, through the various agencies we are dealing with, it gets to where it should. One important point to make is that UNRWA is one of the most audited organisations in the world because people want to ensure precisely what the Chair says. We have done our own verification in recent years. I was very pleased with the result, even though it did not come across as positive at the beginning. When the issue of funding for Gaza arose in the European Commission, concerns were raised by some people about where the funding was going and whether some of it was being diverted. Just last week, a report was completed at EU level and presented to the Commission which showed that there was no evidence whatsoever in regard to any funds being diverted to purposes other than what they are designed for. Our only request as a result of that is that there would be no new conditions attached to the programmes the Commission is satisfied are working well. That is more of a political issue because unwarranted conditions could be used as a mechanism to stall funding. We want the funding to continue. The European Commission has given a clean report on that topic as recently as last week.

I completely take the Chair's point about Perth. Western Australia is a long way from Canberra and Sydney. It is not on a list but it is being talked about, with a view to being considered down the road. We will take on board what the Chair has said. Given that it is so far away from Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, the other cities that people know, there is a reasonable case to be made for that possibility to be examined by the Department.