Mr. Shane Leahy:

For background, like so many other Irish people, I volunteered with Gorta in the early stages of the war in Ukraine. I found myself on the Ukrainian side of the border, helping refugees coming out, and was touched by the people we met as we set about trying to assist. Luckily, I met a business colleague who happened to be the logistics director of CEMARK CRH. It is the biggest cement company in Ukraine and is owned by CRH. It had warehouses and trucks that were not requisitioned by the government, as a lot of the health service had been. We were able to utilise its infrastructure to deliver aid into the far reaches of Ukraine in the early stages of the war. We first got a Garda Síochána convoy that delivered aid and we were able to deliver that into the far reaches of Ukraine. The National Rehabilitation Hospital also donated its old equipment and another Irish company, the Kirby Group, delivered some generators. We were able to prove the model with that and set up warehouses in Ukraine with CEMARK truck drivers who had been working with the company for more than 20 years to deliver aid.

From that, we developed a partnership with Heart To Heart International, a major US charity. I acknowledge its incredible support of our organisation. We have delivered 16 hospital units into the far reaches of Ukraine. Three of those units have been damaged by Russia but we have managed to repair them and I am glad to say they are up and operating. That is one of the projects that we still work on in Ukraine. We worked with our colleagues here, Professors Bury and Fitzpatrick, to deliver one of those units into Mykolaiv. It is still in operation but we have been requested to move it to a location with even great need, which we will do.

Regarding medicines, we were able to prove the model through working with An Garda Síochána and others, and delivered in excess of $80 million of medicine that Heart To Heart International had donated to us. It is flown to Vienna and we truck it into our warehouse in Ukraine. We then use the distribution within Ukraine to deliver it to its end destination. We have been able to scale that successfully. It is largely self-financed. I acknowledge the contributions of a number of colleagues. The EY Entrepreneur of the Year donated some funds but it is largely self-funded and the warehouses and transportation are largely provided by CEMARK. We are continuing to deliver.

In respect of Gaza, we want to deliver one unit, which would be our first, to prove the model. We would like to then scale it up from there. Ross Kelly, who is a former Entrepreneur of the Year finalist has come on board and is leading that on our behalf. He is sitting in the Gallery today. He has done some phenomenal work laying the ground for getting that hospital unit in.