Mr. Michael Gaffey:

I thank the Cathaoirleach for those comments and questions. I will take them first before handing over to Mr. Tierney to talk about the fellowships programme. That is an especially important one for us because this is our 50th year of having fellowships in Ireland for students from developing countries, that is, not specifically from SIDS but in general.

On the loss and damage fund, as I was saying, the work is really only beginning. It is important that the fund has been established and that we have pledged funding. In fact, Ireland's pledge is the second highest per capitaafter that of the United Arab Emirates, which is a sign of our commitment to the fund. The board and governing arrangements of the fund are being worked on and discussions on the composition of the board are under way. It will be unique in having specific additional seats for the least developed countries and small island developing states, which was a key priority for us in the design of the board. We are involved in those discussions and there will, we hope, be agreement on the board and how it will work. The Cathaoirleach is absolutely correct to say the issue of new and innovative sources of financing, not just relying on Government funding, is going to be the big priority for COP in Baku in November. There is a year to be spent, therefore, on making this a reality and seeing how we can make progress.

There has been much discussion on how to generate additional funding, and a lot of discussion happened internationally last year. The Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, has been very active as a voice for SIDS not only in saying the rest of the world was not taking seriously the existential threat to countries such as hers but also in saying the international financial institutions have to reorganise their ways of working to generate much more significant funding for climate change, without undermining - this is the balance - their mandate and role in the fight to end poverty. What we have to understand, even just conceptually, is that we cannot separate the fight against poverty and for development from the threat of climate change, but many of the international institutions were designed post war without any regard, obviously, to the climate change challenge.

Prime Minister Mottley, therefore, has been putting forward proposals and President Macron held a summit in Paris in June to consider them. It is a little slow, as everything multilateral can be, but we are moving towards new ways of working and of generating finance through the international financial institutions, and there will also be the role of the private sector and, indeed, the fossil fuel sector. These are difficult discussions that will, in the end, potentially affect everybody because how we generate funds internationally to address climate change, depending on what innovative funds are agreed, could have an impact on everybody. That is a major item of work internationally for us all over this year and beyond, but it will be clear that progress is needed this year.

I will skip over the question on fellowships and hand that to Mr. Tierney. The programme has been really important for us in that we learn from the fellows who come here and also in that we send volunteers from Ireland, usually through the UN system, which Mr. Tierney will speak about, such that there is a two-way exchange.

It is the 50th anniversary of Irish Aid. We are not devoting massive resources to celebrating the anniversary but to redoubling our work and to looking at how we work. Nevertheless, we will have events to mark it. We are working on those at the moment and we will have a full programme we can share with the committee.

The Cathaoirleach mentioned the office of the Caribbean. It is co-located in the new consulate general in Miami, which was opened last year with Consul General Sarah Kavanagh heading it up. That, I think, will enable us to engage much more substantively with the Caribbean countries. We also have an office for Central America, based in our embassy in Mexico, and we are looking to increase our work as an aid programme throughout Central America and the Caribbean. We are also working clearly in Colombia. We will, I hope, have some additional resources and staff to do that.

The Cathaoirleach also raised the huge question of the impact of conflict. When the Russian invasion of Ukraine happened on 22 February 2022, the reaction was huge across the board, but it is clear that in some countries there was a diversion of assistance from, for instance, Africa to Ukraine, and there was a reaction by African countries to the European focus on Europe at the expense of Africa. In talking to African colleagues, we make the point clearly that, obviously, we are going to respond to an illegal war on our own Continent, but we want to make clear we will not do so at the expense of assistance for the development of Africa or of reaction to crises and wars in Africa. Of course, it is worth remembering that African countries are host to many millions more refugees than are European countries, so we do not at all want to give the impression the response to the Ukraine war is at the expense of Africa. I can say for certain that in respect of Ireland's response, it has not been. We have not moved any funding away from Africa. Supplementary Estimates in the past two years have enabled us to respond to the crises and maintain the level of development funding. It has not been the case universally. There is a real sense internationally that levels of ODA are not increasing in the way they should and that some countries are implementing cuts at a time of crisis, and there is a real sense of this being a time of crisis in terms not just of the impact on people but also of the ability to respond. Ireland, however, has so far been to the fore in maintaining its response not at the expense of other crises.

Even so, the extent of crisis is such that we will have to wait and see. We have in the past been able to respond to one crisis followed by another. Now we are facing major crises relating not only to natural disasters but also to wars and conflicts that are happening at the same time and coming on top of one another. It is a very challenging time for a humanitarian response and many of the UN appeals for major crises are severely underfunded. When, at the end of last year, we received a very important Supplementary Estimate of €25 million for the ODA programme, most of that was devoted to the crisis in Gaza, but we were clear also in ensuring funding went, for instance, to the crisis in Sudan. That is a huge crisis, with perhaps 7 million refugees flowing from it, but it is not getting the attention it deserves, so we have been highlighting it as well. One of the biggest challenges at the moment in any programme such as ours relates to how we should carry out the important development work that can yield progress while at the same time responding to crises that are destroying that progress and responding to climate change, which is the overarching existential threat for it all. The operating context is more complex than it was, or at least than it was understood to be in the past, which might be a more accurate way to put it.

On fellowships, I will hand over to my colleague Mr. Tierney.