Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

Mr. Whyte is very welcome. At the outset, I acknowledge the 360 UNRWA staff who have been killed in the course of Israel's genocide. I express my own solidarity with those people who today are still risking their lives, as Mr. Whyte has said, to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people in the face of extreme terror. At the onset of Israel's genocide in Gaza, organisations which provided aid and social services in Gaza faced slander that was, as I understand it, entirely unsubstantiated to this day. The review by the European Union found that safeguards were working, yet it still chose to burden such organisations with additional red tape and bureaucracy. UNRWA was not immune to those utterly untrue slanders. Will Mr. Whyte speak to that impact that had on his organisation? Was funding denied to it? Has additional conditionality been placed on UNRWA? How has it impacted UNRWA's ability to alleviate the impacts of Israel's genocide on the people of Gaza? Mr. Whyte said that current funding has dropped to €150 million and that is all it has until the end of the year. In that light, could Mr. Whyte outline what efforts are currently in place with a view to ensuring UNRWA will receive the funding that is needed? How can we as a committee, through the Irish Government, support those efforts?