Ms Caoimhe de Barra:

I thank the Chair for the very reasonable and valid question. The committee does see different iterations of the international development and humanitarian sector coming before it. First, Dóchas is the overall umbrella body for development and humanitarian organisations in Ireland. Dóchas has a membership of approximately 55 organisations, ranging from very small organisations which do small project-based and long-term development work to the larger organisations which do development and humanitarian work. It broadly represents the sector with its different stakeholders, the Government in particular. Dóchas would often appear here in advance of the budget, for example, to set out its pre-budget position. Typically, Dóchas represents the broad sector.

The Irish Emergency Alliance has a very narrow, specific mandate. The mandate is to increase the amount of funds raised for emergencies and to enable faster, more efficient and more impactful response by coming together as a set of humanitarian agencies. Humanitarian agencies are a subset of the broader Dóchas grouping, which is very wide and was not set up to do something as specific as fundraising for emergencies. The holy trinity in other countries is the humanitarian NGOs, the government and the public. The Irish Emergency Alliance, with the support of the Government and the media in particular, enables the public to make an informed and quick decision as to who to donate to at the time of a massive emergency. It has been proven in many contexts, particularly in the UK, Canada, and Australia, that having a mechanism like this makes members of the public feel more confident in making a donation because they have less to process in doing it. Having the backing of the Government increases that confidence yet again.

What we have also seen is that younger generations are much more inclined to donate to a joint appeal than to any individual agency. We are looking down the road. We are looking at the future. Our society is changing. In the years in which I grew up, people essentially had loyalty to one organisation, which they may have encountered first as a schoolchild. They grew up with that organisation and were brand loyal. This is no longer the case for the younger generation in Ireland but also internationally. We have evidence of that. We want to make sure members of the public remain committed to humanitarian action as they age. This has been proven in other countries as a way to continue to have younger people, but also everybody else who is interested in humanitarian support, continue to donate. As I stated earlier, it has also been proven to expand the volume of money people will donate. The very existence of an alliance people can trust to do a job quickly, with the support of Government and the major national broadcaster, increases the funding available. That is what we are trying to get to.

As Ms O'Donnell mentioned, starting one of these initiatives does not come without a cost. In my organisation, I had to allocate people time and funding. We have a website, a technical team, processes and governance. There is a cost to being a member of an alliance. All of the members of the alliance understand that and we are absorbing it for the moment. Organisations need to make an informed decision, however, and typically the board would be involved. We are all working with extremely tight margins. We are all SORP-compliant agencies which means we are trying to keep our administration down to the minimum. Each agency has to make decisions between allocating its scarce resources to this now or waiting. All of the agencies here, the Red Cross, Concern, Goal and Oxfam all believe in the concept. As Ms O'Donnell has said, as most of them are in the deck in the UK, there is no issue with the concept. It is about resource and resource availability. If the Government were to provide matched funding, that would make the problem a lot easier to address for all members. In fact, it would be a game-changer, as Ms O'Donnell stated.