Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In a number of areas, we continue our commitment to address directly things such as the price impacts. The Department is encouraging our international partners to adjust programmes rapidly in response to the crisis. It is also important that the international response focuses on the need to prevent a further deterioration of food security. As the Deputy and I both acknowledged, it is expected that the impacts will be felt in areas such as Ethiopia, Kenya and Afghanistan. Irish embassies in those countries have worked closely to monitor the food security situation and the associated risk of conflict. My officials will continue to work with international partners to encourage the diversification of food supply for countries that rely directly on imports from Ukraine and the Russian Federation. We will also explore opportunities to support the scale-up of national social protection programmes to help vulnerable food consumers. In the longer term, we will continue to work with our partners. The key is that the World Food Programme itself is very heavily reliant on directly buying from both Russia and Ukraine.

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