Foreign Conflicts
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-21
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Neale Richmond (FG), Dublin Rathdown

The short answer is "Yes" but I will give a little more detail to the context of how we do that. In recent years, Ireland's humanitarian support has included funding to the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, country-based pooled fund, the UN population fund and the International Rescue Committee to target people most in need, particularly women and girls for aforementioned reasons. OCHA's Sudan pool is our largest partner in humanitarian response. This fund is a rapid and flexible funding mechanism, which supports national and international aid organisations and UN agencies to work in co-ordination with local partners to respond to chronic and emerging needs. The fund has received a major injection of funding from the US Government of €200 million. Our support to Irish Aid partner organisations including GOAL, Trócaire and Concern has enabled life-saving assistance to reach the most vulnerable communities, and we work consistently with the UN Refugee Agency, the International Committee of the Red Cross in Chad, Sudan and South Sudan. Ireland will continue to be a trusted partner. When we see development budgets being slashed by other member states it has a very real consequence. We have famine in Sudan due to the conflict there, but due to the cuts in aid and development it is harder to get a humanitarian response to starving children. We see an ebola outbreak in the DRC that is spreading in a virulent manner that is being affected by health systems that have been absolutely destroyed due to aid cuts. Our actions, or the inaction of our partners, have very real consequences that we will be dealing with for years to come.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:58+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-21