Mr. Dominic Crowley:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to address it. I will focus on half a dozen structural and policy issues and Ms O'Neill De Guilio will pick up more deeply on the impacts of these on the ground with disaster-affected populations.

First, the funding situation is deeply worrying. The global humanitarian situation is not sustainable in the way it is currently being implemented. Faced with a record and seemingly ever-growing level of need in the last three years, as reported on the UN's financial tracking system, the UN has contributed between 69% and 73% of all global funding. Within that, the US has been responsible for between 35% and 47% of all global funding and this reliance on a very small number of donors is not sustainable. If Trump were to win the election - I hope this is not too political - we would expect there to be a cut in the humanitarian and development funding budgets. Any sort of cut would be catastrophic.

The reality is that too few EU member states are allocating anything like the 0.7% of GNI to development aid funding and some member states do not transparently report on their funding allocations at all. The result of this is was a record funding gap for humanitarian action in 2023.

Second, there were hopes that the MFF mid-term review that was completed recently would see an increase in aid budgets. When not realised, as Ms McKenna mentioned, cuts were made to the

NDICI-Global Europe budgets to support Ukraine and migration costs. NGO hopes that the humanitarian budget would be increased were not met and, in real terms, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, ECRE's, budget was cut because the emergency aid reserve was taken out of the solidarity and emergency reserve, SEAR, and limited to an absolute maximum of one third of the SEAR. In the two previous years, ECRE had accessed very close to 50% of the SEAR so in real terms their budget for this year is lower than it was for last year or the year before.

Third, civil society organisations' access to NDICI funding is difficult. Despite the NDICI commitment to establishing strategic partnerships with civil society organisations, this is proving to be challenging. A recent Concord report noted that there is an over-reliance by NDICI on allocating funding to UN and member state agencies for the implementation of programmes and that the eligibility process and criteria are obstacles to effective civil society organisation, CSO, engagement. More needs to be done to ensure CSO access to multi-annual NDICI funding streams. Greater transparency, easier access and more inclusive country-level dialogue would go a long way to achieving this.

To touch on the political again, the implications of the recent European parliamentary elections are potentially disturbing. It is unclear if a more right-wing Parliament will be sympathetic to a humanitarian and development agenda but the sense is not positive. Negotiations around the annual budget allocations and the next MFF may well be more challenging from the perspective of the NGOs in Ireland.

There are also concerns about the lack of structural connectedness and coherence within the EU. The recent leaking of the briefing book of the Department for International Partnerships, INTPA, for the incoming Commissioner - referred to by Ms McKenna - reflected a pattern that has been evident for the past few years. The focus on the global gateway and the EU's economic interests is to the detriment of fragile and conflict-affected contexts - contexts in which ECRE rightly focuses its attentions where humanitarian and development needs are greatest.

In terms of the next Commission, it is unclear if it will bring more clarity to this structural connectedness issue but if, for example, INTPA and ECRE were to be brought together under one Commissioner finding common ground must be done in a way that allows them to retain their own competencies and regulations. I will hand over to Ms O'Neill De Guilio.