Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
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Question 232: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the reason he has not sought the deployment of 130 personnel from the rapid response team to provide assistance in Haiti as opposed to waiting to be asked to provide assistance; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2283/10]

Peter Power (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)
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The Government's Rapid Response Corps is a roster of skilled and experienced volunteers who make themselves available to deploy at short notice to work in humanitarian emergency situations. The Corps comprises 130 individuals with specialised skills in logistics, engineering, public health, humanitarian coordination and protection. Most will have worked extensively overseas in humanitarian and/or development settings.

Individual members of the Corps are deployed at the request of the UN and other humanitarian organisations in need of their specific skills. Those agencies and organisations have the requisite knowledge and experience to determine where gaps exist and how to use Irish personnel optimally. Immediately following the Haiti earthquake Rapid Response Corps members were requested by my Department to indicate their availability to deploy to the earthquake zone. We have quickly deployed an electrical engineer and an IT expert to the World Food Programme. We expect that further deployments of the Corps will take place over the coming days and weeks. One of the lessons of the international community's response to the 2004 Tsunami was that the mass deployment of volunteers, while well-intentioned, can often hamper relief efforts. Consequently our Rapid Response Corps has been designed to quickly provide highly-specialised skills as and when requested by those leading the relief effort. This model is regarded as best practice in the humanitarian community. Since 2007, there have been 65 deployments of the Corps to more than 20 countries. Members of the Corps are working in Afghanistan, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka and Sudan.