Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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In his concluding final couple of lines, the Chairman hit the nucleus of the situation. The international community has a key role to play and it has to be in conjunction with the authorities within the region.

I want to be optimistic because, on the positive side, we have a cessation in Ethiopia and we have the start of what I hope will be a peace process that will develop and get stronger and stronger. The means to enable that to get stronger is through international engagement. It is through allowing the international community to help work with the Ethiopian Government to ensure that that can happen. It is important to mention that Ireland's involvement with Ethiopia is a strong long-term involvement. We acknowledge the incredible work that the ambassador, H.E. Ms Brennan and her reduced team did on the ground along with Irish NGOs in keeping that humanitarian access into the affected region.

Now, we have an opportunity. We want as soon as possible to re-engage and strengthen our involvement with Ethiopia to work with it to ensure that we can continue to develop the humanitarian response and also rebuild that strong relationship which existed.

In the other parts of the region of the Horn of Africa, there are some positives. President Ruto's election in Kenya is a positive development. President Ruto and his Government have been strong on working to ensure that what is a growing crisis within northern Kenya is firmly being addressed by the Government. We will continue to work with them on that issue. In Somalia, there obviously is an ongoing situation with Al-Shabaab which is difficult to deal with but we have had an election there with a peaceful conclusion which is positive. Therefore, in general, there are more positive shoots of encouragement growing in the political world there than there were this time 12 months ago.

Our role, both as Ireland and as the EU, and through the UN, is to ensure that we continue to facilitate and enable there but it is important always to acknowledge it is so fragile and that things can unravel quickly. It is not surprising when one looks at the points I was making about how much conflict and the presence of conflict contributes to the instability which leads to the humanitarian crisis. Effectively, in all the countries we are talking about, with the exception of Kenya, there is an ongoing long-term situation where in the heart of the region that is affected there has been a conflict situation there.

I am easing towards being more positive but with that realisation that we are still at the very early stages of, hopefully, what will be positive developments on the political engagement side.