Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)

I want to raise an issue that is of significant concern to me, the Green Party and many Irish people, namely, the impact of the highly politicised attack on overseas aid by the US Government. All of us in this House will be aware of the extreme and really quite extraordinary steps taken by the US Administration, in particular the almost slapstick efforts by Elon Musk to shut down wholesale entire federal agencies or strip away funding from what is deemed to be ideologically opposite to the Administration's agenda.

We saw how fabricated the whole casus belliwas when we heard Karoline Leavitt single out a programme here in Ireland, supposedly funded by the United States Agency for International Development, USAID, as a "DEI musical", as if it funded actors to sing on stage about equality themes. I spoke at that event in the US embassy and, of course, it was in no way similar to what Ms Leavitt described.

Political theatrics aside, there are the most serious life and death consequences to what is happening. We in Ireland and the European Union should not be standing by impassively. The effective shutting down of USAID and the freezing of its significant aid and development budget has put hundreds of thousands of lives at risk, including the lives of many children.

To give a few examples, the freeze in humanitarian assistance in Sudan has led to the shuttering of over 1,100 communal kitchens that were set up to help those who have been left destitute by the civil war in that country. In Congo, the aid group Action Against Hunger will stop treating tens of thousands of malnourished children from May. The charity has said that will put those children in mortal danger. In Senegal, the biggest anti-malaria project has closed. It distributed bed nets and medication to tens of thousands of people. In Yemen, 220,000 displaced people will lose access to critical maternal healthcare, protection from violence, rape treatment and other lifesaving care, according to the United Nations Population Fund.

There are thousands of similar USAID programmes that have been paused indefinitely and the impact for the world's poorest communities cannot be overstated. USAID has effectively shut down and 80% of its operations are suspended indefinitely. Some €8.2 billion in funds remain frozen and are likely to remain so. Regardless of the outcome of legal challenges, even if the executive order is overturned and the exemptions for lifesaving programmes are carved out, with a Republican Congress in power for the next two years, it is fair to say that these cuts are here to stay.

The impact is being felt here, too. GOAL received €103 million annually from USAID, which was its largest donor. It has had to lay off 930 people, which is 30% of its global workforce. Concern received €53 million annually. It has had to make 400 staff redundant. Trócaire received €1.3 million each year and Self Help Africa received €300,000 per year.

We are faced with this appalling and utterly unnecessary impact. In light of that, the Irish Government must step up. We must urgently signal that we are prepared to increase our overseas development aid, ODA, budget significantly to try to offset some of the impact. We know that hundreds of thousands of lives are being put at risk. We must work closely with our EU neighbours to try to scale up an emergency fund that can have a truly global reach and ensure the impact of the US retreat from supporting the most vulnerable on our planet is lessened.

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