Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Question 73: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade his views on the international aid response to the famine in the Horn of Africa/East Africa; and if the emergency aid financial targets have been met with an equal [i]per capita[/i] response from donor countries. [27327/11]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The international community is facing a grave humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa, with an estimated thirteen million people in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti affected by a long-running drought.

The situation is most critical in Somalia, where the United Nations estimates that 750,000 are at imminent risk of starvation and where the conflict and access issues have greatly exacerbated the situation. Famine has been declared in six districts of the country and hundreds of thousands of people have moved to Mogadishu or across the border to Kenya or Ethiopia. Meanwhile, millions of people in Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti, continue to face severe difficulties of their own.

Ireland has responded swiftly to the crisis, allocating more than €10 million for emergency assistance to UN agencies, the Red Cross movement and other humanitarian agencies working in the Horn of Africa.

In addition, at a United Nations Ministerial Summit on the Horn of Africa in New York last week, the Tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore TD, pledged a further €10 million in humanitarian assistance in 2011 and 2012. Our emergency assistance combined with our longer term food security support to the region will amount to approximately €50 million in 2011 and 2012. Ireland continues to be one of the most committed and generous donors to the region in per capita terms.

Other donors have also contributed significantly to the relief operation, with pledges to date reaching €1.8 billion of the estimated €2.5 billion cost of the relief operation to the end of 2011. The European Commission and EU Member States have provided more than half a billion euro, the United States has pledged more than $600 million and the UN's own Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), to which Ireland is a major contributor, has also allocated over $117 million. These funds have allowed the UN, the Red Cross and many NGOs to provide food, health care and other assistance to many hundreds of thousands of people.

While many have given generously the UN has warned that the relief operation requires a further $700 million in 2011 if all of the needs in the region are to be met. Under these circumstances there is an onus on national governments, including those which are not traditional aid donors, as well as the private sector, to step up their assistance.

At EU level, Ireland has already been instrumental in pushing for a more intensive response and I used the recent meeting of EU Development Ministers in Sopot in Poland to call on the EU to respond quickly and generously. We will continue to call on the international community to increase its efforts in the period ahead.