David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their attendance and for their work and presentation. I wholeheartedly agree with my colleagues on what is happening in Gaza and Ukraine. I do not want to repeat that but what is happening is absolutely appalling. I have just come from the Dáil, where we heard harrowing accounts of what happened in the Stardust nightclub all those decades ago. It struck me that today, young people are being slaughtered all over the world in huge numbers and I thought of what their families are going through and will go through in future.

Before we get into the financial aspects, I want to ask about the forgotten disaster in Sudan. It is said that 25 million people need help there now and there are 18 million people facing famine. It is appalling what is going on there between the civil war and the supply of arms and munitions from outside is allowing it to continue. As they are present, I seek the witnesses' views on that and whether their organisations have any involvement there.

It is also extraordinarily dangerous and difficult there at the moment as I understand it and it is spilling into neighbouring countries. There is very little coverage of it anywhere, yet it is monumentally massive. The amount of people suffering and dying and the atrocities that are occurring there are on a different level and scale. I would like to give the witnesses the opportunity to comment on that because it is not being spoken about in our media very much compared to other places, which are equally bad, but with this situation we just hear about it here and there. It is off the scale.