Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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329. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade if a new recruitment campaign for the rapid response roster will be carried out by the end of the first quarter of 2021. [5512/21]

Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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My Department, through Irish Aid, oversees the Rapid Response Corps which is a central feature of Ireland’s humanitarian programme.  The most recent recruitment took place in 2018 and the Corps currently contains a large cohort of experienced personnel available to deploy at short notice in response to severe crises and emergencies.  In light of this, it is not envisaged that a recruitment campaign will be carried in 2021.

Irish Aid is in regular dialogue with the UN Standby Partners, with whom Ireland has formal bilateral Standby Agreements, and with the Standby Partnership Network on issues relating to the deployment of personnel from our Rapid Response Corps. In this context, a key consideration, as we plan future recruitment campaigns, will be to ensure that our Roster contains personnel with the evolving range of skillsets required by our UN partners so that we can continue to respond quickly and effectively to sudden onset crises.    

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in fewer opportunities for physical deployments from Ireland’s Rapid Response Roster over the past year. Irish Aid will continue to monitor the impact of the pandemic on the operation of the Roster and on our next recruitment campaign which we expect to launch in 2022.