Catherine Ardagh (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Chairman for indulging me and allowing me in. I thank the presenters. This is Ms McKenna's third or fourth time here, so none of the delegates have shirked their responsibility to ensure their organisations are considered favourably in the budget negotiations.

Much of this is about the Irish public and where it is at. Many people probably do not know there is such a crisis in the offing. It is probably up to us, as public representatives, to let people know there is a catastrophe coming down the road. It is really upsetting. It seems so far away. The way it is being spoken about, it seems as if it is a case of them and us. It is amazing how something small that we can do can have such a great impact if we put the funds in place. However, it is important to have a better public awareness campaign on the crisis in the Horn of Africa. As others have said, politicians' focus is on the war in Ukraine. The funds follow the public sentiment, unfortunately. There is a body of work to be done to move the public sentiment back to other crises around the world.

Hopefully that is something we can do as a committee. Others have said we should utilise our role on the Security Council but is there anything else we could do? We will all be lobbying our own finance spokespeople and Ministers to ensure overseas development aid is not cut and is increased. If there is anything the witnesses can think of for us to do, we are listening. We all feel helpless listening to the contributions today but meetings like this in small rooms like these can have an impact on people's lives far away. If every country had put a little more in, many more lives would be saved. I thank the witnesses again for all their work.