Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I will make some comments on the Yazidi question, which is important. Ireland strongly condemns all forms of persecution on the basis of religion or belief. Many diverse communities, including Christians and Yazidis, have ancient roots in Iraq. The EU's Iraq strategy addresses reconciliation and the preservation of Iraq's ethnic and religious diversity. Full implementation of Iraq's programme for national reconciliation will be important to avoid inflaming sectarian divisions. We welcome the recent passing by the Iraqi Parliament of a Yazidi female survivors law, which represents progress in addressing the legacy of ISIS crimes against Yazidi and other minority groups.

A UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da'esh/ISIL, UNITAD, was established by Resolution 2379 (2017). It requests the Secretary General to establish an investigative team, headed by a special adviser, Mr. Karim Khan, to support domestic efforts to hold ISIS accountable by collecting, preserving and storing evidence in Iraq of acts that might amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed in Iraq. The head of UNITAD reports directly to the UN Security Council.

In June 2020, Mr. Khan told the Security Council the team had already identified 344 alleged ISIS perpetrators involved with the 2014 massacre of Yazidis in the Sinjar district of northern Iraq. UNITAD also welcomed a draft Iraqi law, presented in November 2019, which would allow Iraq to prosecute acts committed by ISIS as genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. The primary responsibility for investigating crimes normally lies with the host government and UNITAD is helping to build the capacity of the Iraqi authorities to investigate these crimes and prosecute those responsible.

The most recent UNITAD report, from November 2020, noted the team had commenced the provision of training and support to Iraqi investigative judges in building case files for the prosecution of ISIS members for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Ireland strongly supports the work of UNITAD and will support its mandate at the Security Council if and when it arises.

Irish Aid gives €9.5 million to the Iraq humanitarian fund. We are making a contribution. I am sorry for the long answer but I know colleagues are interested in and concerned about that matter.

I will come back to Deputies on the Armenia issue. I said we would take a look at it and I thought we had a very good and mature debate on it and there was no evidence of party politics. There were some genuine concerns raised and I said we would take a look at it, which we will.

The truth is our Estimates are relatively straightforward in the work we do and foreign policy is much more complicated. The committee will speak next to the Minister of State who is responsible for the spending of much money that keeps many people alive, educates many young children and supports many very vulnerable communities. The Irish Aid programme is respected across the world as one of the most transparent, efficient, effective and impactful aid programmes of any country. We repeatedly get peer-reviewed and very positive feedback from those peer reviews relating to the impact on the most vulnerable people, or the furthest behind, to use a UN term. That is how Irish Aid is measured in the work it is doing. The Minister of State, Deputy Brophy, can deal with those matters as he is more than capable of doing that. I hope people are happy to allow the Estimates for Vote 28 to move ahead.