Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I can only speak for Sierra Leone. I concur absolutely with the Deputy on his remarks on the efforts of the NGOs. The work done by GOAL, Concern, Plan and other agencies is extremely effective. The Irish Government's response is that we need to be flexible in our approach and Irish Aid, which is very close to the NGO community, is being allowed to pivot towards the Ebola response. The big concern I have as Minister of State with responsibility for official development assistance is we must be mindful of the fact that we need to ensure we do not spark a humanitarian crisis in all of this. The nutrition programmes being delivered need to continue apace.

Instinctively, I think the Deputy is right about the underreporting. It is only a matter of weeks since I was there, and it was at that juncture the UN had come to Sierra Leone in particular. Now that Mr. Banbury has been appointed as co-ordinator, our ambassador is working very closely on liaising with the Sierra Leone Government to ensure we assist in building the infrastructure to treat people medically on the ground, and this response is happening. It is a fair assumption that where there was no international involvement until relatively recently, and instead reliance on the Sierra Leone departments of health, social welfare or education to deliver programmes with the NGOs, there was a certain lack of capacity and the NGOs were punching above their weight. Now we have international co-ordination and various governments have responded proactively.

I agree absolutely the European response needs to be rapid. The resolution yesterday, arising from the Luxembourg meeting, is significant because it recognises for the first time the need to ensure we protect health workers who go out there. A live issue we were dealing with when I was there was the need to ensure local Sierra Leonean health workers were paid, because they had not been paid for quite a period of time. It is difficult to expect an Irish or Spanish health worker to go there if the Sierra Leonean health workers are not being paid and are staying away. There was a strike at one stage. These are the issues we are dealing with. We are very effective and making solid progress on these issues. I agree the international response needs to be more proactive, but for our part as members of the European Union we have had an influence in bringing this to bear, in terms of our interventions through the Minister, Deputy Flanagan, at the Foreign Affairs Council yesterday. We are keeping a daily watch on this because we want to ensure where possible cases are dealt with medically within the region. This is the most effective way of dealing with cases.

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