Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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87. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the extent to which he continues to encourage awareness at EU and UN level of the ongoing pressing issues of the requirement of humanitarian aid in its various forms and locations; the extent, if any, to which a more cohesive and rapid response strategy is emerging; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1773/14]

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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94. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the degree to which the international community continues to offer support to the countries worldwide that have been affected by various natural disasters over the past ten years; the extent to which commitments entered into by the developed countries have materialised in places such as Haiti, the Philippines and others; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1780/14]

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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96. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the extent to which the various commitments entered into by the international community in terms of humanitarian aid over the past six years have been honoured by the donors; the efforts ongoing to encourage such delivery; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1782/14]

Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 87, 94 and 96 together.

Significant progress has been made in recent years to improve the scale and effectiveness of the response of the international community to major disasters and humanitarian crises, with many lessons having been learned from previous crises such as the 2004 Tsunami and the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Under the leadership of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), clear systems have been put in place to ensure the most effective, efficient and rapid delivery of aid possible. Ireland has and will continue to play our part in ensuring these reforms are implemented, and that responses are timely and effective, and meet the most critical, immediate needs.

The steps taken to strengthen humanitarian response include the provision by Ireland and other donors of predictable emergency response funding. However, disasters on the scale of the earthquake in Haiti, the famine in the Horn of Africa, the conflict in Syria and, more recently, the Typhoon in the Philippines and conflicts in the Central African Republic and South Sudan continue to challenge the humanitarian system. For such crises, international pledging conferences are often considered necessary in order to generate additional donor funding.

Two months after the January 2010 Haiti earthquake, an international donor conference was held in New York, at which US $4.5 billion worth of assistance over two years was pledged by the international community in response to the crisis. UN figures indicate that, by the end of 2012, just $2.38 billion of this had actually been disbursed. For our part, we worked hard to meet the Government’s commitments to the people of Haiti. By the end of 2012, our pledge of €13 million had been honoured and exceeded, with support totalling almost €14 million.

At a Ministerial mini-summit in New York in September 2011, An Tánaiste pledged that €10 million in humanitarian assistance would be made available to help the poorest and most vulnerable in the Horn of Africa before the end of 2012. I am happy to report that this pledge has also been met, with almost €12 million in funding provided by December 2012. Similarly, at the High-Level International Humanitarian Pledging Conference for Syria in January 2013, I announced a commitment of €4.7 million to support the provision of humanitarian assistance in Syria and its neighbouring countries. By the end of 2013, this pledge had been exceeded by over €6.5 million, with a total of €11.3 million in assistance provided throughout the course of the year. We can be very proud of our record on delivery of our pledges.

Ireland, as one of the founding members of the Good Humanitarian Donorship (GHD) initiative, takes seriously our commitment to act as a responsible and accountable donor. Equally, we are committed to the full implementation of the European Consensus on Humanitarian Aid, which clearly articulates the EU and its Member States’ commitment to ensuring that humanitarian aid pledges are transformed into commitments and disbursements in a timely way, and are clearly linked to the assessment of needs.

We are responding to large-scale and sudden onset emergencies. Ireland has a long-standing focus and commitment to so-called forgotten crises; ongoing, protracted and under-funded humanitarian crises such as those in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Western Sahara and the countries of the Sahel. These crises very often do not make the evening news, or fall off the political and humanitarian agendas of the international community. Alongside the provision of predictable funding to such crises, we take every opportunity, including throughout the course of our EU Presidency in 2013, to bring the attention of other donors to these situations.

In order to promote the importance of ensuring that donor aid pledges are credible, achievable, and properly monitored, the OECD has published a ‘Recommendation on Good Pledging Practice’. This comprises a set of principles relating to pledging practice for financial undertakings to developing countries and is designed to serve as a benchmark to help OECD Member States frame future aid pledges in terms that are clear, practical, realistic, and capable of being monitored. Ireland strongly supports this OECD initiative and will continue to use all appropriate fora to urge our fellow donors to ensure that they meet their humanitarian commitments in full.