Dara Murphy (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The evidence the Deputy presented is not disputed. There is an acceptance there is very significant difficulty and abuse of civil and human rights of the people in Libya. Certainly it is going too far to say that any circumstance is better than drowning. We have seen the great work our navy has done.

On the Deputy's specific point about how the aid and the programmes will be distributed, it will be through UNICEF and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. It is through their presence on the ground that the moneys are to be dispersed. As the Deputy said, there is not a government in Libya. Therefore, we must work to ensure that pressure can be brought to bear from the African Union, United Nations, the League of Arab States and the European Union, which are all working together, to encourage a process that has seen some limited progress to date but without an effective government in the country to guarantee and secure the human rights of people, it is extremely difficult.

This is not an excuse but it is a fact that it is only since April that this €90 million of funding has been approved to address the situation on the ground and to continue to work on the principle of working with countries of origin and countries of transit to ensure that people do not take, and are protected from being forced to take, these terrible perilous journeys that we see being taken. I accept that is a very late timeline given what we know to have been the case in Libya for a long number of months.

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