Mr. Feargal O'Connell:

I thank Senator Craughwell. I want to come back to him on a couple of those points. We also need to think about the counterfactual of an under-resourced military in Ethiopia and what that looks like. If you look at the history of the African continent over the last three decades, you will see that we need properly resourced and professionally run militaries across Africa which are operating professionally and respecting international humanitarian law. I have worked, personally, in a lot of contexts alongside African Union peacekeepers and UN peacekeepers, and I can tell members that the vast bulk of countries contributing to African missions are now African countries themselves. In a lot of ways, these are African solutions to African problems. Those peacekeepers are not going to come out of nowhere. They need to come from professionally resourced militaries. Ethiopia is in a very particularly tricky part of the world. While the spending needs to be proportionate, and we need to put it in the context of global military spending, I do not necessarily think that a complete about-face in that respect is in the interests of the continent or of global peace and security.

The Senator talked about the figure of around €520 million with regard to what Ireland has invested. I want to put that in context. The United States Agency for International Development estimates that the annual cost of mitigating the effects of climate change in Ethiopia is $250 million. We need to collectively shift our mindset a little bit. In a lot of ways, we are failing to see the wood for the trees if we are looking at what Ethiopia is spending on its military. Ms Balfe talked about what the next climate financing target is going to be at the next COP, which is $1.5-----