Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

My question concentrated mostly on the international response and while I appreciate the Minister of State's detailed comments on the Irish response, it is on the international response I would like to ask him some further questions.

The reality, which requires little analysis, is that $550 million has been sought, and of that, as the Minister of State noted, $133 million has been pledged. Of that latter figure, $84 million has been received. That is where we stand. We now have 3 million people on their 30th night of living in the open with a specific request for their needs of 100,000 to 200,000 tents. The death rates, though we cannot judge their accuracy, are not below 175,000 with 70,000 injured. That needs further analysis and there are questions of remoteness.

The issue is that of the international community's response which is running at less than 25% of Kofi Annan's appeal. While it will be interesting to compare one set of responses to another, there has been an outrageous neglect in terms of the response, which represents a moral challenge.

Europe has been very good at responding. I am not pointing a finger, but the additional €80 million being suggested by the European Commission is conditional on approval by the Council of Ministers in the European Parliament. Has that approval been given? The issue is simply one of the European Commission responding to the international outrage at the huge shortfall on this very obvious appeal.

We can identify the needs and the costs involved but help has not been provided, nor has there been movement with regard to the tents required by 2 million people. Are the mechanisms for approval in place? The Minister of State referred to the November conference but that will be too late. The figures for reconstruction are welcome and will be valuable in the spring but it will be too late by then for hundreds of thousands of people. Funding is needed now for an immediate response. While I support the Government on its proposals to the UN for emergency mechanisms to respond to disasters, the misery of the response on this occasion is atypical.

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