Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour) | Oireachtas source

On the humanitarian front, some 58% of the pledges made in Kuwait have been honoured. We want the remainder of those pledges to be honoured. Ireland is in a particularly strong position to ask for them to be honoured because, on a per-capita basis, it is one of the highest contributors to the humanitarian effort relating to this crisis. There is no doubt that it is a crisis. More than 1 million people are in refugee camps in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon and 4 million overall have been affected by the situation. The latter includes 2 million displaced persons.

Efforts have been made to deal with this issue previously and they have not been as successful as the international community had initially envisaged. I hope last week's meeting involving US Secretary of State Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov will lead to a conference and provide a basis for a settlement. As Deputy Smith stated, there is concern with regard to the composition of the various forces which comprise the Syrian opposition. There is no doubt there is quite a range of such forces and that some extreme elements are involved.

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