Ms Caoimhe de Barra:

To elaborate a little more, the situation is beyond anything anybody could imagine. It really is. As well as the bombings, injuries and loss of life we see on our screens every single day, there is also the silent loss of life. There are 50,000 children who are acutely malnourished in Gaza right now. Acute malnutrition means that unless they get medical support, therapeutic feeding and medicinal help, many of those children may well die. Some 1.1 million people are facing famine right now. Between now and the end of May, famine conditions will be prevalent throughout northern Gaza.

The increase in humanitarian access that Israel promised a month ago after the appalling targeting of World Central Kitchen has delivered virtually nothing. I was looking yesterday at the number of trucks that are being allowed over the border and at the pattern, week by week and day by day over the last number of months. There is a marginal increase, by which I mean a fraction below 10% to 15%, in the number of trucks going over the border. It is still a maximum of 40% of what it was before 7 October, when 500 trucks were going over each day. That was at a time when markets were full and supermarkets were stocked but now there is no food in the country.

The emergency alliance stands absolutely ready. We have our contingency plans in place. As soon as we can get access, that is, as soon as there is safe, full and unimpeded humanitarian access, we can ramp up our response. We hope that, should we be in a position to do that - we have RTÉ support already - that the Government would see fit to provide matched funding, which would enable us to start that extremely difficult process of supporting the people of Gaza as they to begin to recover. The reality is it is a mammoth task.