Mr. Dominic Crowley:

I thank the Deputy for the questions. The first point in relation to debt is a really important one. If more were to be done in terms of debt relief or debt forgiveness, it could have a huge bearing on the degree to which governments could afford to deliver the level of services that are required. This could in turn maybe contribute to a greater degree of stability in some of these very uncomfortable countries.

The question of cuts needs to be considered in the context of inadequacy. If one has a pre-existing level of inadequacy of funding, then the cuts just deepen that and makes it worse. If we look at the humanitarian situation in any given year, the global humanitarian overview, which is the UN's projection of humanitarian needs, shows that less than one third of funding needs are met. The consequences of that year-on-year increase in the level of needs is that the year-on-year gap between needs and the funding being supplied is just getting worse. By failing to meet needs adequately in the first place, we are leaving people weaker and more vulnerable or exposed to shocks and stresses that they might otherwise be better able to withstand.

The Deputy asked about taking conflict out of it. We cannot because conflict and conflict-affected contexts use up between 80% and 85% of all humanitarian funding annually. The reality is that we are seeing more conflicts, more protracted conflicts and more recurrent conflicts. We are seeing an increasing number of coups across the whole of the Sahel belt, which has seen multiple coups over the last number of years. The level of political instability, I would suggest, is at an all-time high. Conflict and the consideration of conflict needs to be at the heart of all of our considerations.