Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)
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Question 100: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs if he will make a statement on such requests as he has had for aid and assistance following on from the recent natural disaster in Indonesia. [3694/08]

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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Seasonal rains caused flooding and landslides in central and east Java in December 2007 and January 2008, with reports of about 118 deaths. Relief activities were principally conducted by the Indonesian authorities, including the national agency for search and rescue, provincial and district co-ordination units for disaster management and the Indonesian Department of Health. The Indonesian authorities, the Indonesian Red Cross Society and NGOs on the ground were equipped with the capacity to respond effectively to the flooding and landslides and no general international appeal for assistance was issued.

The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, IFRC, is a key partner of Irish Aid in responding to the sudden onset of natural disasters. Under our partnership agreement for 2006-07, we contributed €1 million to the IFRC's disaster relief emergency fund, and we will contribute a further €2 million during the period 2008-09. This fund ensures that immediate financial support is available for Red Cross and Red Crescent societies to respond to emergencies.

Irish Aid also supports the UN's central emergency response fund, CERF, which, since its inception in 2006, has contributed over €52 million to the fund. CERF was established with Ireland's support specifically to facilitate rapid response to emergencies by pre-positioning funds for urgent humanitarian action.

Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)
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I welcome the Minister of State's reply. Should a request for structural adaptation be submitted to his Department, after the effects of events are known, will it be inclined to respond? I am referring to the capacity of communities to truly recover by restoring lost infrastructure as a result of natural disasters.

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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Irish Aid provided €52 million as part of the CERF. Of the €20 million contributed to the tsunami relief effort, €6.4 million was allocated directly to Indonesia and a further €5.6 million to the south Asia region, including Indonesia. A special envoy, Chris Flood, was appointed and he visited the country twice in the aftermath of the disaster. The Irish people provided almost €80 million in private contributions to NGOs such as Concern, GOAL, Trócaire and the Irish Red Cross. It placed Ireland as one of the most generous nations. Our funding was provided in those ways and, hopefully, we will also allocate funding of more than €2 million in 2008 and 2009.

John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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Last year Irish Aid published a value for money review entitled, Support to Tsunami Affected Countries. It recommended that Irish Aid allocates more funds to monitor technical support in future large scale emergencies, greater standardisation of reports and contracts, more use of evaluations and increased engagement with joint funding mechanisms where appropriate and, in supporting future emergencies, a smaller number of partner agencies with specific expertise should be selected to ensure Irish Aid support does not become fragmented. Since then, the organisation has provided funding in Mexico following severe flooding and Indonesia. Were the recommendations in this review adopted in the provision of funding to Mexico and Indonesia? Will the Minister of State outline the meetings he has had with his officials about the recommendations? What has been done to implement them, given he has had two opportunities since the review to act on them?

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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We have responded to other natural disasters such as Hurricane Noel in Mexico, the cyclone in Bangladesh, the Caribbean and central America, severe flooding in Uganda and Mozambique and the earthquake in Peru. The Irish Red Cross and other NGOs in Indonesia had sufficient capacity to respond to the flooding and landslides. No international appeal for assistance issued and, therefore, we knew of no major unfilled gaps during the emergency response phase that required a large scale mobilisation of international resources. I will come back to the Deputy on the review to which he referred, as I must obtain more detail on it.