 I believe all of what you're saying, priorities, et cetera, et cetera. My question is about political will. We know where Europe is at at the moment. And it seems to me that most governments now have a very important job of jobs for people, and all of that. I'm just wondering, do you believe that the Europeans have the political will to really want to continue the journey that you're about and your team are about, and that they're going to keep that at the heart of what you're about as it were, saving ourselves, et cetera, et cetera? Thank you. Gentleman behind in the white shirt there, yes? And have I a third hand anywhere? Hello, my name's Graham. I'm a lecturer in school business in London. I'm with the Humanitarian Logistics Institute. My query, I completely agree with everything that the Commissioner had said. I'm drawn to your two priorities about anticipating the crisis and the professionalism. Obviously, my background being in logistics and the role it plays in humanitarian operations. And one of the things that comes up time and again when I go to conferences, academic conferences, is the lack of funding that goes into training preparation for humanitarian agencies. They only get the funding, obviously, when the crisis arises from the public. Is there a mechanism, or will you be offering a mechanism to provide funding for training for a 19-year-old switch? As you're saying, the preparation phase could assist, and could cut down costs as well. Thank you very much. Third part of the stage, no? Yes, I see another hand there. And we'll just take those three interventions here. Hi, I'm Thomas. I'm a PhD researcher at the Institute of College. I have two questions. The first is related to the criteria that are used to define humanitarian disasters when they are officially recognised. Is that an event or a situation that becomes a disaster? And I suppose specifically you talked about Libya and Syria. That they have officially been recognised and at what point they become recognised. And also could a economic crisis be recognised as a humanitarian disaster somewhere like Greece at the moment? Could it be a humanitarian disaster? And my other point is just in relation to your priority of anticipating disasters. Do you see any potential to link early warning systems to some kind of automated response mechanism and thinking in a private sector do you have weather indexed insurance? Could we have weather indexed aid programmes or something? Thank you very much. Three very interesting interventions there. Commissioner now. I'll try to... Can we have the mic? Can you manage? You're a politician. Let me have the microphone. And I'm sure the minister would have his own views on political will. Europeans, European citizens remain committed to help people in their most dire moment of need. Four out of five Europeans say they want us to provide humanitarian assistance to people devastated by disasters or conflicts. And this is a very small drop vis-a-vis the time before the crisis. But with the same token, citizens expect more from us. They expect to do more with their sacrifice and they expect focus on results. So when I started as a commissioner probably if you were to ask me what did you do last year I would say last year we did programmes and projects for 1.1 billion euros, which is what we did. When you ask me now I would say maybe I would start with the same but I would say we have touched the lives of nearly 150 million people around the world providing food and water and shelter and protection and medical care. And I would be able to then drill down and say what is it that we do? We now are providing assistance for the Issa Hel as the minister announced. This is a big looming crisis. We, the commission, we are providing 275 million euros of humanitarian aid and development assistance. With this money we are going to get more than a million kids to benefit. We are going to get 500,000 pregnant women to benefit and we can go through the, we can say 7 million in total will be touched by this funding of people affected by the disaster. So that accountability is what I think has changed, not the will. If we don't manage to deliver this focus on results I worry that the support of our population may go down. We also need to be clear that stability in places like Issa Hel is relevant for us. If Mali and Mauritania and Northern Nigeria and then Chad and Niger, if they fall into a path of insecurity that's going to come and bite us. But this is the logical argument we have to put in front of people regularly and in a credible way. I am very much in favor of having programs that have the longer term capacity in mind. In our program, one of the legislations we will be passing is for Volunteer Humanitarian Corp for Europe and there the emphasis is on selecting and training volunteers and then of course deploying volunteers. We today have eco funds that go to support capacity in NGOs. Not huge amounts but they are there and more importantly eight to ten percent of our money is invested in disaster risk reduction. These are activities that help us to learn how to bring down the they are basically learning training activities. Where we still fail is in our ability to recognize the role of prepositioning logistics delivery. They are still debating this area I am sure you are aware of it and it is important that this debate kind of brings results. How we define disasters? Of course we look at the people at risk population at risk in a conflict it would be how many people die I mean are there people living being you know lives lost how many are displaced how many are at risk in a natural disaster similarly we would look at the population at risk and we would look at can we help people and on that basis we make decisions for Syria we just made a three million funding decision on February 3 because we qualify this to be a humanitarian emergency. It goes for ambulances, medical care but also for support potentially for refugees that are likely to go up. Greece I would not qualify as a humanitarian disaster. I mean I go to places where being a humanitarian commissioner actually helps to see our own crisis in Europe with different paraphrase. Of course if you have an economic crisis that needs to truly devastating consequences of a magnitude you know obviously it is very difficult for the Greek people I don't want to understate it but Europe is rich we have to be very honest with ourselves even with our crisis we are rich not only materially rich we have institutions rule of law we have the accumulated well the knowledge the skills we are in a little bit of a mess because Europe has lived beyond its means for a while not each country not every and each country but collectively we spent more than we earned so now we have to buckle up I mean in Eastern Europe we went through that and it was very painful it was very painful but we came out of it stronger and more competitive so I you know I would be careful to put the in fairness to Greece part of the problem in Greece to be very blunt is that the politicians of Greece have not been able to create a platform for national unity in the face of crisis here in Ireland I think people have done it it is still painful but there is a much stronger sense of we are going to pull go through this we will pull out of this crisis now we can go through the reasons why it happened point fingers in my job pointing fingers should come last let's get out of the mess and then come to you know assess what happened and how it happened so that would be my take on it and on early warning system you have a very good point a very good point we are doing better because especially after the tsunami there is much more invested in early warning systems but we are not where we should be in integrating what they tell us for action take this a hell early warnings are saying there is trouble coming but it hasn't yet arrived and there is this risk I mean why do we need to wait until kids die to say ah it is a crisis there I think we still have a way to go to make early warning systems a decision making tool of the kind they should be just as recently as yesterday on a radio program the comment came up about Greece and the fact that their economic crisis is leading to people not being able to get the most basic of medicines and some NGOs and medical NGOs have moved in now so it is entirely possible that if they are already in the system they may come looking for some assistance from development aid budgets because products like insulin are not being given not being made available even to diabetics so that has got to a very basic nature so we might see somewhere we could ask the minister as well I just want to correct myself of course if there are people who suffer we have to always never mind rich or poor society there has to be room for compassion so don't get my answer to say because we did provide help to Japan it's a rich country I'm not saying never ever when I look at Greece they are our neighbors I mean we live door to door I think there is more resilience in the Greek society that kind of meets the eye and I am more confident just a very question in relation to the political will I think the political will is very strong still here in Ireland there isn't any question there despite the economic crisis and the experience which I suppose just shows the robustness that is out amongst the public in general and the awareness of humanitarian disasters and the need for aid and also the need for development I suppose in the broader sense of the European Union we have heard some of one or two countries here and there who are requesting the appropriateness of meeting targets EU targets etc EU targets in the context of the economic crisis but I don't think the same thing as far as I can gather the commissioner obviously knows the situation much better that there is anything substantial in that respect but I do think that it does it behoves all of us to make sure again as the commissioner was saying about how we use the aid it is better with less it is useful professional greater coordination in relation to the NGOs in relation to the countries bilaterally better coordination in relation to multilateral aid better professionals in terms of the other question that was raised and the awareness and that people are able to see that this is effective, that the outcomes are effective and that it is not just a one sort of thing that there is some pathway true so that you look when you provide the humanitarian aid on an emergency basis it is going the step further to try and provide development that is going to allow a situation whereby this will not arise again this disaster will try to and I think once that is done people are very logical they will see the situation and they are very compassionate and I think the situation can be the whole area of whether or not people are still prepared to make the contribution I think there is no question about it at all and that is in relation to what Nora was saying there about the Department of Foreign Affairs has humanitarian teams we do have a rapid deployment core in place and of course as well as there being humanitarian teams to act very quickly in the emergency there are humanitarian hopes around about whether there is supply stockpiled available for distribution and that various countries will share their supplies and various NGOs so that there can be a very rapid deployment so I think all of that is extremely important and I think the Commissioner may know that we are pursuing the possibility of having such a humanitarian help in Shannon and we are looking at a feasibility study on that to see how what we might do in Ireland in this respect so we are looking forward to looking forward to talking to the Commissioner about this later on but also looking forward to the feasibility basis particularly encouraged by your attitude of neutrality on the importance of it because I have been working on it for the first time in Haiti in terms of access and the area that I have been working in is a partnership program between peace building and humanitarian aid and I am wondering if you could say a little bit about the tension that can exist in the differences of approaches between peace building and humanitarian aid because I have been out in Haiti for six years and initially was advising out there in conflict in communities I have worked with gang members so I have been working with our Steeds Exes and with an attitude of neutrality to access and sit down with the gang members and have brought them to Ireland as well but one of the things post-earthquake that obviously came into play was the humanitarian approach created a lot of conflict I think we are all aware of it and most of my efforts in the last three years have been about advising on reducing the conflicts in the tensions that exist between a peace building process which is a long term intervention and a humanitarian aid approach and I am very happy to do so but I am only short here Thank you very much Thank you Dheer Thank you Commissioner My name is Hans Soma I had a docus the umbrella group of Irish Development NGOs one of the mechanisms that NGOs use to increase their cooperation coordination and I once thank you very much for your contribution and also thank you very much for your availability to meet with the NGOs this morning I know you are meeting with the minister of Foreign Affairs Committee and I think that you are saying three things to them today one is thank you very much and I really appreciate that message that is a really important message that people in Ireland need to hear I think you said also very much a clear message about acting early and the wisdom of investing in prevention rather than responding to crises and I think there is a very strong third message that you have for us today around the importance of humanitarian principles and I suppose that is the one I am most worried about and certainly our members would be worried about a pressure being out there in the European Union member states on the humanitarian principles and I wonder if you can set this straight on that Thank you very much, you can hand the mic from back up here, thank you Thank you for the questions on Haiti when I arrived there after the earthquake and we traveled around we visited devastating areas my first thought was that as terrible this earthquake was and it was terrible, terrible it wasn't Haiti's biggest problem Haiti's biggest problem are the decades of no development the conflicts that had been boiling and of course got unleashed and that to get to the point of stability this is going to be a long, long and it's not going to be three years and five years as some of those who came in New York to support Haiti were hoping it's going to be longer I do believe that there is more we can do to build bridges between the humanitarian community that has a very clear mandate to save lives and the development community those like you who work on resilience on basically buildings social strength because for us in the humanitarian world it is not good enough to save a life we want to see this life worth living and for this reason I personally strongly believe in the need to talk to groups that have different mandates and seek where we can actually unite around a common goal the common goal of course is a more stable more prosperous world that is a better place for our children to live not easy though not easy and we actually had lunch discussion that very difficult to build horizontal connections much easier to take your mandate and run with it but we all have an obligation to do better and as the crisis is forcing as the economic crisis is forcing to be more competitive, leaner hopefully it would force us to be more connected on the development side and you can count on us being on that issue on the principles we in Europe with the Lisbon Treaty we created two things the external action service and an independent humanitarian aid commissioner and the latter my position it is to provide neutrality and independence of humanitarian aid and protect it there have been some leanings but it is now very clear that humanitarian action is outside of the external action service it is neutral and independent and it is based on principles but we have to continue to work on those and again I might turn to the minister later today as we discussed the future presidency what we can do together for this banner proposition of Europe because I'll tell you I actually believe not only morally this is the right thing to do but it is beneficial for Europe because it puts Europe on highest standing and I see when I talk to people I see the respect they have for Europe for being able to do the right thing just because it is the right thing to do not for any political gains not for contracts not for influence and I think we would do a huge to our citizens if we stand back from these principles and we need to work on getting the general public to understand why they are important and I would admit when I came from the World Bank to become a commissioner I knew the theory but it is a very different thing now to now the practice and I think we have a job to do to share this and make it understandable to each and every one of us thank you very much indeed commissioner we are coming to the end of our meeting here just listening to the commissioner in her last statement there it strikes me if there is any kind of silver cloud or silver lining to the economic crisis we are going through it has forced our European leaders to talk horizontally as well as in their own little nation in their own country so perhaps that dialogue has been a starting point and will continue on nobody is an island on their own and I think if ever we wanted to see the world as one big village we have seen it in the last two or three years in the policies and the dialogue that has to be going on between leaders I want on all your perhaps to thank first of all all of you for attending here today for the very interesting submissions put in I want to thank the management team here in the volunteer center for allowing us to use this venue which is very suitable venue appropriate venue to have had this discussion I want to thank the institute of international and European affairs for their cooperation with the RSA section of the department of foreign affairs for this team of debates that will be ongoing in the institute and I particularly want to thank minister Joe Costolo for being here because that shows just what his interest is that he's not all doing something else that he's at the time to be here to listen to both the commissioner and to all of you and I particularly want to thank commissioner I think we have all been very impressed with her knowledge her passion, her interest and her practicality I think maybe I could say this I mean women are practical features and I think you saw a very good demonstration of that today a woman from Bulgaria country that a lot of us wouldn't know a great deal about so we're extremely impressed very beautiful country people have been there on holidays and so I want on all your behalf to thank the commissioner for giving us her time today for her passion and her knowledge and her expertise and I hope and I think we will all go away renewed in whatever aspect of development work we might be involved in as a result of your talk today and as a result of the ministers thank you all very much