Patricia Stephenson (Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, for coming to the Chamber. I am delighted to see him because it is fantastic to have this dialogue with the responsible Minister.

I have asked to talk about overseas development assistance, an issue I know is close to the Minister of State’s heart. The international development sector, which has been absolutely decimated by the freeze placed on USAID projects by the Trump administration, stands at a really critical moment in Ireland and globally. At the end of February, approximately $60 billion of funding has been cut overnight. At the same time, many states in Europe, including France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and Finland, to name just a few, have already, or are in the process of, reducing their ODA. Likewise, last week we saw that in the UK where Keir Starmer’s Government made a serious cut to ODA.

We are seeing a huge disruption to the work of humanitarian development and peace-building agencies, which is going to cost lives. It is going to increase the vulnerability of the most at-risk people in the world. This drastic funding withdrawal is going to threaten peace and stability and is potentially going to create a political vacuum, which leaves space for extremism and increased influence of non-human rights focused or compliant countries, and seriously undermine the already much-delayed progress we have been attempting to make towards the achievement of our sustainable development goals. Linked to that is our climate goals. Therefore, the implications of this are going to have a greater impact on climate change.

The leave no one behind and the furthest behind first approach is one of the major outcome areas for Irish Aid. I am asking the Minister of State what he is going to do within this context to ensure that no one is going to be left behind when we are about to see colossal and possibly irreparable harm as a consequence of these cuts.

I spent a long time living in east Africa, and I know first hand how critical this funding is. I know what is going to happen without it. I have seen the impacts of famine on families and communities in South Sudan and Somalia. I am anticipating that the images we are going to see on our televisions and our mobile phones are going to be horrific.

Over a 90-day period estimates suggest that 11.7 million women and girls will be denied essential reproductive healthcare. We will see an increase in things like maternal mortality, in the number of girls being forced into early marriage and in the number of women dying from childbirth. We are going to see an increase in things like child labour, because desperate families are going to be forcing their kids to work because they are struggling just to put food on the table and are living in starvation conditions.

The famine early warning system has been shut down as a consequence of these cuts, which has undermined efforts to pre-empt and act early on food crises. It is estimated that €1 spent on early action saves €7 on humanitarian response, and that is why this is so incredibly important.

We are going to see a huge increase in deaths from HIV and AIDS. Two thirds of people globally are treated for AIDS with US funding. The fact that this money is now stopped means we are going to see a huge increase in deaths.

Ireland has a proud history of humanitarian work. I have worked on Irish Aid projects and I have seen the fantastic work we do abroad. I am deeply disappointed that the Irish Government's commitment to ODA was not in the programme for Government. It has been watered down. This included removing the deadline of 2030 to reach our ODA obligation of 0.7%. Rather than progressing, we are stagnating in relation to our ODA commitments.

I am asking the Minister of State what his plan is. What are we going to do in the EU to scale up funding as a bloc? Has he talked with his EU counterparts on this issue? What are we doing in terms of our diplomatic links in the humanitarian sector? Is it going to be on his agenda when he is visiting Tanzania and Kenya? Will he make sure it is on the Taoiseach’s agenda next week when he is visiting the US for St Patrick's Day, and critically when he is visiting Washington to really push back on the Trump administration and what it has done within this context?

Many countries have crippled spending, and they have these enormous debt servicing obligations as well. How can we look into tax justice as a way to develop better responses for countries in their resiliency and humanitarian programming?