Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I warmly welcome the Government's focus on these matters. Both the Minister of State, Deputy Brophy, and the Minister, Deputy Coveney, have a clear focus on the issue of hunger. Ireland has championed, with the United States, hunger at the United Nations as an absolute priority but now 22 million people face starvation in the Horn of Africa. There is an immediate issue that needs to be resolved as best we can, ensuring that that does not happen and those people do not succumb and that they survive.

Of course, the Minister of State is correct that the larger issue of climate change fundamentally alters matters. That is why I welcome at least that element of the Sharm el-Sheikh conclusions that there will be a resilience fund to support countries such as Somalia but we need to, as I say, have an immediate and urgent response as well as the medium-term response the Minister of State describes.

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