Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 29 November 2022
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence
Horn of Africa: Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs
Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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The entire decision-making behind that approach is based on the ability to take money and disburse it very quickly through Irish NGOs, which are doing an incredible job and which we have supported right throughout the year with funding and by giving more money to them. When we have a figure like €30 million and a few short weeks in which to distribute it, there is no question that some of the bigger UN agencies on the ground have the logistical ability to deliver that to ensure that what we give as a donation ends up directly going in and going in in the fastest possible way. There would be no other way to do that. It is not how we would look at an entire annual or multiyear programme, but in terms of an immediate donation that we want to use to hit directly on the ground, the UN has the scale to deliver in a way that nobody else can deliver on that. We still want funding to go through our own NGOs because some of our own NGO programmes, which I visited and saw first hand, are incredible. We have maxed out what we think is the best possible way of ensuring that that money hits the ground as fast as possible and gets directly to the source.