Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I would not say I am glad to have an opportunity to speak on this issue but I am pleased to be in the House to do so. It has been a tragic 12 months in terms of natural disasters. We have had hurricanes, floods, tidal waves, earthquakes, mudslides, bush and forest fires and famine due to drought. One disaster appears to follow the next. The tsunami of less than 12 months ago seems like years ago because it has been overtaken in our newspapers and on our television screens by equally horrific tragedies, one after the other. We must begin to ask ourselves, as an international wealthy community in the West, what we are doing to prepare for what we know will be the next tragedy.

On 8 October a powerful earthquake, 7.6 on the Richter scale, struck north-east Islamabad, Pakistani Kashmir, near the Indian border, followed by a series of aftershocks. The earthquake centred on the Kashmir border between India and Pakistan, although the tremor was felt as far away as Kabul and New Delhi. The worst affected regions appear to be in and around the town of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan administered Kashmir, close to the line of control with India. The town itself is extremely badly damaged and some of the surrounding villages have been flattened, as the Minister of State outlined.

The earthquake has probably killed more than 30,000 people but it is difficult to estimate, even within 5,000 or 10,000, the numbers who have died. It appears that up to 60,000 people have been injured, 1 million people have been left in acute need of life saving assistance, 2.5 million people are homeless and 4 million people have been affected. Many access routes to the region have been blocked by mudslides and earthquakes, making it difficult to get relief teams into the area.

So far, the response has been substantial but it has not been enough because people continue to die. On 11 October, the United Nations launched a $272 million flash appeal for the south Asia earthquake. The appeal covers life saving and early recovery activities for a six-month emergency phase in the remote region which faces enormous logistical difficulties because landslides have cut off many of the roads, access to many areas is only possible by helicopter and more than 80% of the buildings have been destroyed. The people need shelter, nutrition, medicines, first aid and transport to carry all that. Heavy rain has made much of the area uninhabitable and mudslides make access even more difficult than it was previously. General access to the area is incredibly difficult. Only one small road is open for light vehicles, which means the people are almost entirely dependent on helicopters to carry in the materials needed for up to 2.5 million homeless people in the region.

UN agencies are already in the area and it is up to the UN to lead in this effort. The UNHCR has begun distributing basic relief supplies for up to 100,000 people using the existing stockpiles throughout the region, including tents, blankets and stoves. The UN world food programme is initially airlifting 200 metric tonnes of high energy biscuits, sufficient for almost 250,000 people, which is vital in the first few days following a disaster when there are no means to cook food. The UN population fund has begun trucking in medical supplies, warning that tens of thousands of people in the area are pregnant and in need of nutrition, medicines and antenatal care for the safe delivery of babies. Many other UN agencies are already at work in the area, including the World Health Organisation and the UN children's fund, UNICEF.

I have concentrated on the UN's response because no one country, certainly not one the size of Ireland, can make a significant impact on its own. So far, the Government's response financially has been fairly good compared with other countries internationally. Ireland and the Irish people are generous when it comes to supporting non-governmental organisations, and the Government is also reasonably generous when it comes to putting funds in place.

I want to reinforce the point made by Deputy Michael D. Higgins about the Irish Government working through the UN because that is the appropriate point of contact, and we have now a so-called UN ambassador, the Minister for Finance, who is involved in the UN reform process. One of the areas the UN must focus on, given what has happened in the past 12 months, is a more efficient crisis response in the areas we can predict will experience problems. We can predict that there will be mudslides and floods in central America again next year. We can predict that there will be hurricane damage in the Caribbean again next year.

We are not talking about creating a crisis force based in Europe or America that can be sent off to regions of the world that need its assistance. It is about building up home-grown capacity in different countries, which is a less sexy but much more efficient and effective way of giving aid. In areas where we know there is likely to be earthquake activity, we should build up supplies, financed by the UN if the countries cannot afford to do it themselves, to ensure the response can get to the areas quickly rather than try to impress the world by sending off planes from the West or by having former American Presidents filmed on site. The UN must give leadership and build capacity in areas of the world that do not have it currently. That is the practical way we can respond.

I am glad to say that our Department of Foreign Affairs has real credibility on human rights and development aid issues within the UN. I know that from people who work in the UN. We also have similar credibility within the European Union where we could be examining the question of communal responses to crises. After the tsunami last year it took the European Union two weeks to issue a coherent press statement outlining its response, only for the British Foreign Minister to contradict that statement. Let us start building capacity and use our influence as a small cog in a big wheel to bring about change within the European Union and within the United Nations. We should build Ireland's reputation for speaking out on human rights and development aid issues because people listen to us in those areas.

The media dictates our response to natural disasters. The more dramatic the incident looks the bigger the impact for four or five days and the need for a political response. Instead of looking for the PR in these responses we should look for planning.

President Musharraf said his government did not have anything like the capacity to deal with such an event, although it was predicted. This is where the United Nations needs to offer leadership and where it has lost credibility over a range of areas in the past two or three years. There is an opportunity now to build UN credibility for offering leadership in desperate situations such as the earthquake, where schools have been swallowed by the earth and populations on the scale of Clonmel have been wiped out, and where the military, medical or organisational capacities do not exist.

Unfortunately, most of these tragedies happen in poor parts of the world, which are hopelessly disorganised and ill-prepared to deal with such events. New Orleans is an exception to this but it was not ready.

Given their wealth, Europe and the United States particularly can play a vital non-political role through the United Nations by increasing capacity in the poorest parts of the world where there is strong evidence to suggest there will be more problems. We already do that in regard to early warning systems for tsunamis or tidal waves to gain a few extra hours' notice. Do we also stockpile food, blankets, tents and medical care and have teams of experts who can travel from the developed world to the developing world at a moment's notice?

Last year I went as a representative of the foreign affairs committee in the European Parliament to the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. We met Louise Arbour, the new High Commissioner for Human Rights, who told us that when there is a slaughter in a place such as Darfur she does not have the finance to give the go-ahead to send an inspection team. It normally takes two weeks before she can do so. That comment reminded me how poorly organised and structured some parts of the United Nations are in respect of immediate responses, and how bad the planning is to deal with humanitarian or natural disasters.

Ireland can do only so much in these cases. We can give money but that can make only a small impact. We can, however, have a large impact and gain an international reputation as a country that is consistent and insistent in trying to bring about UN reform. We can forget about the Security Council because what Ireland says there will not make a great difference.

We should concentrate on areas where we have influence and credibility such as human rights and development aid, to build a capacity in the United Nations for an immediate crisis response to horrific situations of which we have seen many examples in the past 12 months.

I have not spoken about the mudslides in Central America but I appeal to the Minister of State and his Department to ensure they are not forgotten because of the enormity of the earthquake in Pakistan.

See this speech in context