Mr. Peter Power:

I thank the Chairman and members of the committee for their kind invitation to join them to brief them about UNICEF's operations around the world, but specifically in respect of Syria and most recently in respect of the appalling humanitarian disaster which I witnessed unfolding this week in the Philippines. With the permission of the Chairman and members, I would like to begin with the Philippines typhoon disaster because it is so timely and urgent.

This morning I returned to Dublin having spent a week in the Philippines where I witnessed the tragic consequences of perhaps the most violent natural disaster in history. I saw the true magnitude of the effect of this disaster on families and children which will forever change their lives and will haunt me for a lifetime. At 4.30 a.m. on 9 November, typhoon Haiyan, known in the Philippines as typhoon Yolanda, made landfall with devastating force. Words alone cannot convey to this committee the ferocity of this super typhoon even though everyone has seen the photographs and the television images. Typhoon Haiyan is possibly the strongest storm ever to have hit a populated land mass. I wish to convey to the committee the sheer scale of the devastation as seen with my own eyes. It is beyond what members may have seen in the media. I wish to convey how many people and children in particular, have been affected.

The sheer numbers alone give some sense of the wide area of devastation and how many are affected. The total population affected is 12.9 million, approximately three times the population of Ireland. The total number of children affected is 5.4 million and the total number of displaced children is 1.7 million. Displaced in this context means that their houses have been destroyed so 1.7 million were rendered homeless overnight. By any measure this is a staggering number of people.

The national media in the Philippines reported this morning that 243,000 houses were completely destroyed with an equal number very severely damaged. To put this figure in context, if an equivalent disaster had occurred in Dublin, the entire city would be rendered uninhabitable. Practically every house would be either completely destroyed or uninhabitable. The city of Dublin would be uninhabitable. That is the scale of what I was confronted with this week in the Philippines.

Following the enormity of the typhoon, UNICEF immediately initiated its highest level of emergency response, mobilising its global resources and personnel to the region. Before the typhoon hit, UNICEF had 70 personnel on the ground and this number was immediately increasedto more than 100 to establish a relief headquarters in the decimated city of Tacloban. I was briefed by our senior team in Tacloban and the massive scale of the relief effort needed became clear. From the air, for hundreds of miles, the devastation was near total. It is estimated that almost 90% of all dwelling houses in the city of Tacloban lie in ruins. I agree with this assessment. The destruction is everywhere to be seen. Rubble is piled up two and three metres high across whole swathes of the city. But for the grace of God and the advance weather warnings, unlike for the tsunami and the Haiti earthquake, I am convinced the death toll would now be in the hundreds of thousands. The relatively low death toll masks the true scale of the devastation. Many of those who died remain underneath the rubble. The stench of death fills the air to the extent that masks are needed when going around the city. I spoke to survivors, many of whom were still traumatised by the ferocity of this experience. They told me that for the first few days there was practically no water or food and children suffered greatly in the early days.

Tacloban is just one city in one region and nine regions of the country were completely devastated by the typhoon. An estimated 5.4 million children have been affected by typhoon Haiyan across the nine regions of the Philippines. An estimated 4.6 million children require psycho-social support and protection against gender-based violence, trafficking and exploitation. By 19 November, the number of children displaced has risen to 1.7 million out of a total of 4 million people. UNICEF is supporting the government-led response in co-ordination with other UN agencies and is leading the water and sanitation and hygiene, WASH, programme which is essential in the immediate aftermath of a disaster of this magnitude. UNICEF is also leading child protection,education and nutrition clusters. UNICEF has identified strategic priorities and is working to prevent deterioration in the pre-existing levels of mortality, morbidity and malnutrition and to provide shelter and support to displaced populations.

Children are growing increasingly vulnerable to water-borne diseases, separation from family, protection violations such as trafficking, child labour and gender-based violence. UNICEF WASH programme supplies were the first to arrive in Tacloban and at least 200,000 people, including women and children, have access to safe drinking water as the first water treatment plant is returned to full operating capacity. I saw with my own eyes some of the children taking water from public taps which had been repaired by UNICEF in conjunction with US aid. It brought home to me the importance of a public water system. These children told me they had no water for days until this tap was fixed.

There have been initial reports of children separated from their families in the Ormoc region and reunification activities are ongoing. There is also growing concern that gender-based violence against women and girls will increase, given the lack of electricity in some areas, particularly in evacuation centres and in makeshift shelters. I did not see any electricity pylons still standing in my tour of the affected areas. Children are also exposed to the danger of physical injuries due to falling debris. With the massive destruction of school infrastructure and day care centres, millions of children are out of school and thousands of teachers have been reported as missing, most likely having fled the area in the days after the typhoon struck. Field assessments indicate that of the 1,415 evacuations centres, 893 are in school buildings which means the schools are occupied as places of shelter for evacuees. In eastern Visayas, almost 2,000 schools were destroyed with an impact on the education of 590,000 children. There is concern over the risk of increased exploitation of children - particularly boys - in child labour. There is a need to support the immediate resumption of schooling for children to give them a sense of normality and to provide them with access to psycho-social support. Members of the committee will have seen the need for such supports during their visits to the areas affected by the crisis in Syria.

UNICEF is working closely with the World Health Organization and the Department of Health to plan mass-immunisation campaigns for measles and to provide oral polio vaccines in an effort to provide life-saving interventions to all affected children. I witnessed the fledging programme in action outside the what was left of the accident and emergency department in Tacloban with the entrance blocked by cars piled high by the typhoon. UNICEF aims to commence the campaign in Tacloban over the next three weeks. With an estimated 1.5 million children at risk of acute malnutrition and close to 800,000 pregnant and lactating women in need of nutritional support, supplies for community-based management of acute malnutrition are also being procured.

I can show the committee a headline in yesterday's edition of a national newspaper, Philippine Daily Inquirer, the paper of record reporting this disaster. The headline states that millions of people are still hungry ten days after the disaster.

It is topped by a dramatic photograph, which we can circulate to the committee, of the city of Tanauan, north of Tacloban where I was, showing a scene of complete destruction. Two unfortunate young girls are running away, covering their noses against the stench of death that was all-pervasive on the days I was there. I will share this photograph with the committee.

UNICEF has increased its funding requirements for typhoon Haiyan to €45 million until May 2014, amounting to a mere six months' humanitarian work. UNICEF has received 49% of its funding requirements to respond to the typhoon. It will call on the Irish Government to assist us in our relief efforts in the Philippines. I thank the Tánaiste, the Minister of State with responsibility for development aid and the Government for their increased financial support of more than €3 million to the relief effort, but the overall UN appeal remains grossly underfunded. Due to the magnitude of this crisis, the UN's major organisations will inevitably be required to handle the fallout in the coming months and years.

I have provided many cold facts and figures, but I hope that they have provided the committee with an accurate assessment of the situation on the ground. We can never forget that, behind each of these numbers, there is a devastated child, mother, father or family. One child in particular lives in my memory. He was in front of one of the ships thrown inland by the ferocity of the storm going through rubble that contained human bodies, scavenging for food. That image will not leave me for a long time.

This is a real tragedy, the true extent of which has not yet been told to the world at large. It will require a globally co-ordinated response. Ireland should and can lead the way. We have a reputation throughout the world for our humanity and for being a nation of compassionate people. If we are to be true to this tradition, Ireland needs to show an act of national solidarity, led by the Government, politicians such as those represented by this committee and the people at large, to show our support for the people of the Philippines in their darkest hour.

Were it not so serious in its own right, the committee would certainly be forgiven for not discussing the other great humanitarian crisis in the world today, that is, Syria. However, assisting the children of Syria remains, for the time being at least, UNICEF's largest and most costly operation, spanning six countries. Many of the committee's members have travelled to the Middle East in recent months and have seen for themselves the widespread devastation of this protracted conflict. Along with a substantial financial contribution of €11 million to support the victims of the Syrian crisis, I wish to acknowledge the committee, the Tánaiste and the Minister of State for their collective commitment to ensuring that international law and basic human rights are upheld while parties try to find political solutions.

I am conscious that I may have extended my time, but my script has been circulated to members. With the Chairman's permission, I will take the remaining parts of the Syrian aspect of my script as being read and conclude on two brief points.