Ms Jane-Ann McKenna:

I thank the Deputy. On the first question regarding the political solution, we would like to acknowledge that when the Tánaiste was in New York only a few weeks ago, he called out all the external actors that are fuelling this conflict very clearly. That was a welcome move because it is not an easy statement to make at the UN General Assembly that there are very much other actors fuelling this conflict. Unfortunately, we are not seeing people coming to the table collectively who are the critical actors in this conflict, not only obviously the relative parties but particularly the countries that are fuelling it. The Taoiseach will be in Washington today and we are hoping that he will address this with President Biden to exert political pressure. We also are looking towards the UK, which is the penholder of Sudan at the UN Security Council at the moment. It would be welcome if there was any political pressure that we could exert there, in particular, in trying to find a resolution to this.

We also need to look, as Ms de Barra said, to the UAE and our own relationship and where we can exert diplomatic pressure to bring all of the different actors to the table. At the moment, we do not see that there is the political momentum. It is welcome that this issue was raised at the UN General Assembly but we have not seen the level of traction needed in bringing the relevant political actors to the table collectively to discuss a meaningful peace process. With regard to the observer mission, I will relay back to Ms de Barra.