Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

Does it not reflect one of the great failures of United Nations reform that a civilian head of an emergency response unit was not in place in Haiti? My second question relates to the European media. The notion that there were serious infrastructural difficulties in Haiti which impeded the response to the disaster is partially contradicted by the fact that within 24 hours of the earthquake, 374 Cuban doctors - assisted by 400 Haitian interns - were providing relief to the people at two emergency field hospitals. The fact that this assistance has been available for a long time in Haiti proved an advantage.

Is the Minister not concerned that in the response of some European government, the emphasis shifted away from the importance of there being a civilian co-ordinator, responsible to the General Secretary of the United Nations, in place to co-ordinate the provision of aid? This deepens our previous discussions on the militarisation of aid, even emergency aid. Is it not evidence of an extraordinary blind spot on the part of the media that, with the exception of CNN, no one noticed the several hundred doctors who were able to provide care and man field hospitals within 24 hours of the earthquake?

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