It is Wednesday, January 12th and we are meeting this morning with a bunch of folks from the administration and from other areas to talk about as a follow-up really to our October meeting but just to get a review of what's been happening since October, we've discussed language that DCF had proposed for the budget adjustment. We'll deal with that in the memorandum that we'll give them but I just wanted to get an update from everyone about how many people are still dealing with the homelessness issue, how many people are we still housing. I have Kathleen Burke scheduled to talk to us about the VRAP program which has been, which has had some new vendors or at least a new call center. I wanted to get an update on that and see if things were getting ironed out there and what the issues may still remain with that program. I guess I'd like the folks to be able to testify and then we can ask questions as a group at the end so that we can, we'll see how it plays off during the course of the morning but I'd really like them to be able to fill us in with the information that they have and then we'll go from there. After that committee will return to discussion with about the budget adjustment memo. I made the changes that you suggested to me overnight and we can review that before we hit the send button. We have a visitor here. We don't know who Tyler is. Tyler, if you are there listening, can you please let us know who you are or if anyone knows who Tyler is? Hello, I'm Tyler Moss with Vermont State Housing Authority and running the VRAP program since the start of the VRAP program was also the program manager for the rental housing stabilization program. We verified by Kathleen. Okay, now thank you. If you could change your name so you know just to have an identifier on there that would be great for us. Thank you. All right, let us start with Sarah Phillips. Welcome back Sarah. Happy New Year. My colleague, Deputy Commissioner Trish Tile, kick us off maybe with some GA data and then I can help fill in the pictures if that would be all right. Welcome, Trisha. Well, thank you very much. We provided just a few minutes ago, I apologize for the late notice, a brief PowerPoint to the committee. If people want to follow along or bring that up on the screen, I'm fine with that. It shows some of our data so I'll just go through that briefly and that maybe we'll set the table for the further discussion if that's okay. So I don't know if we want to, if someone could bring that up on the screen. Is it under Sarah's name? I see. I don't see anything under your name yet. Just came in from Macy to Ron. It's under Sarah's name. We'll follow along rather than sharing. Great. So the first slide is the is a trend line on the overall motel utilization since the beginning of the pandemic, which we show this as of April 1st, 2020. And it will move through and you'll see as the trend as some of the rules and different things have happened throughout it, it takes a look at where we are with our current utilization as well. So moving to the second slide, it talks about how many households are in motels at this point and the adults and children. So we are at 16, well actually we're at just over 1700 as of this morning. Adults, this is, this data is as of January 6th. So 1600 and 77 adults and almost 500 children are placed in motels currently. The number of households is listed as 1451. However, we have 1385 rooms. That is just a, when people look at the data, that is just a factor of our housing together policy, which is people who are not legally bound to each other as have chosen to remain to live in the same room. And they have to each qualify on their own right in order to do that. So that just means two households could be placed in one room. So there's a little discrepancy there. The next page folks will see is the payments for security services. When we were, we gave this committee some information last session about the security contracts. And this is just since July to present from the various security contractors that we've used for the motels specifically. So you'll see that total at the bottom 716,000. We are providing Green Mountain Concert Services and LaMoyale County Sheriff are providing the majority of our current motel security. And we have security in place in probably eight to 10 of our highest use motels throughout the state. So the ones with the highest number of people in them. We have that extra security setup. The next page shows those hotels where we have them in Green Mountain Concert Services is the coverage that we have there. LaMoyale County Sheriff provides as they can. There's not a set schedule and their availability in the most recent weeks has been challenging. They've been challenged by staffing issues, but they're providing most of their service in Washington County and have recently told us they would also cover Chittenden County some as well as they have and then the hours that Green Mountain Concert Services is on site. As you can see their evening and overnight hours for the most part. Average hotel cost. There's been a lot of information about how much the hotels, how much we've been paying for the motels. And then are we able to offer additional higher rates to incentivize hotels to accept more people. And we have been doing that. That rate you can see has gone up since the beginning of the pandemic. The average was somewhere around $88 a night. It's now up to $105 per night. And of course that's very regionally specific. Some of the higher cost hotels are in the Chittenden County area. And then the hotel costs per month by month. This is fluctuating because it's based on our bill payers and their ability to get those payments to the hotels in a timely manner. You'll see in February of 2021 we brought on an additional person to help with the backlog of payments to the motels. So that's why that number is higher. It's not that there were additional people. But the total payments since March of 2020, well April really of 2020, to the motels themselves. This does not include any of the other security or other motel outreach services or any of the other pieces that went along with it is $76 million today. And then the last slide was just a reminder. Some folks may remember that there were essential payment checks that went to people as rules changed over the last year, back last June. As July 1 started, the rules changed and shifted the eligibility and reduced the ability of some people to access hotels. And that group of people received an essential persons check of $2,500. And that was the first round to distributed to 630 households. A lot of those people ended up going into the shelter system at that point. And then in the fall, there was another 132 checks that were issued between $2,500 and $4,000 depending on the household size. And that coincided with the just before the pause was placed, the governor paused the program when there was a lot of pieces going back and forth. And then we were heading into adverse weather conditions. So people were able to choose the essential persons check. If they had an additional, if they had a plan for permanent housing and they opted for the check, 132 households chose that instead of remaining in housing. That's what I have for current data to say where we are right now. I'm happy to answer any questions. And then I think Director Phillips has some additional information about people in the program. Yep. Representative Trana. Thank you, Chair Stevens. Just two questions. 1,372 people in the motels plus 500. So that is that 1,800 total individuals in that? I'm a little confused. Or is that 500 in the 1,300 figure? No, that is cumulative. So there are 1,372, or I'd have to look at the number adults now. And sorry, 1,677 adults as of January 6th and 489 children. Having that up is over 2,000. Okay. And the other question is the spike. I think we heard last week or earlier this week that there were considerably fewer motel stays. Is there a spike due to the weather? Yesterday, I mean, because of the cold weather, the extreme temperatures, there was not. We were able to house everybody in hotels that we were very lucky. Some of the hotels opened up additional beds because of the cold weather. So people were able to access. We only transported two people as folks may be aware. We're now this is new to the program. We're transporting people to other districts if their current district does not have a bed. So on Monday, we transported an individual from Burlington to St. Albans. And yesterday, we transported an individual from Bennington to Rutland. And that was it. People didn't either choose to move to another district and found alternatives or we were able to place people. Okay. And just one other question. Last year, one of the motels had opened up with some volunteer medical people as a sort of a makeshift infirmary. Is that still running at this time? I'm not sure. Are you referring to the quarantine isolation site at the Ho Hum in Chittenden County? It could be, yes. Sarah, do you want to touch base on that? Contract with the Champlain Housing Trust who operates the Ho Hum as the state's alternative housing site for folks who need to isolate or quarantine due to COVID. That's, it's not staffed by volunteers. It's fully staffed. It's a professional site. It's a housing site, not a medical site, but the community health centers of Burlington does provide sort of medical oversight and support sort of planning around people's margins based on their status and environment. We lost your audio. That is what I was referring to. And thanks for clarifying that. Thank you very much. Just to be clear, we don't, that data is not included in Deputy Commissioner Tiles' data about the General Assistance Emergency Housing Program. That access to that program isn't, it's not GA. It operates outside of GA. Okay, Representative Murphy. Thank you Chair Stevens. I have a question about the next to last slide, the hotel cost by month when, when it was referenced that that February spike was just there were extra people to pay bills rather than extra requests. So I am curious as we look at the decreased amounts, whether there are outstanding or a backlog that hasn't been compensated yet so that this actually isn't to date quite the full figure? This, this is to date. There are a few, because we have 68 different hotels, they have various abilities to track this well. So we, we had to have a cut off in November because of our first FEMA claim. We had to wrap all of that up and send it in. So there was a hard stop at the end of November to say we have to have all the bills and all the invoices from you so we can pay those. And so we did a big push to let all of the hotels know that we needed all of their back bills. So we believe this is everything current since November. And then we continue to be, we have no backlog at the moment that we're aware of. Thank you. Senator Clay. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. And thank you, Trisha, so much for all the work you're doing here. I want to make. Sorry. Sorry. Anyway, thank you for my apologies. Okay, the chair was trying to silence me yet again. There we go. Anyway, thank you, Trisha. In your last slide, the essential payments, is that the same as the rapid rehousing support? No. No. People that had the essential, were eligible for essential payments, were also still eligible for rapid resolution funding if they had a plan for permanent housing and a need up to $8,000. Okay. And the total numbers now are very close to what the total numbers were a year ago, like 2000. And so with the people that have taken the... No, Sarah? You're saying no? If you look at the height, if you look at the chart that Deputy Commissioner Tile shared, we were close to 2,000 households at the height. We're at closer to 1,300 households right now when I look at that chart. Deputy Commissioner can correct me if I'm wrong, but... Yes, we're lower than our height, but certainly approaching the higher end. But are the drop, are those people, I know it's hard to track everyone, but has anyone who's left the housing, emergency housing, come back into the system? Or once they've left with any support they cannot come back? How is that working? No, people are eligible to come back in if they have another homeless event for sure. And people that have moved on to other situations do tend to come back in. There's a lot of churn in the Motel voucher program, to be honest. We serve, right now we have about, as I said, 1,380 rooms maximum, but we served probably 2,000 households over the course of the month. So various people coming. There are some churn within those numbers that come in and out. Okay, that 2,000 is what I was trying to get my head around. So thank you. Thank you very much. Representative Toronto. Thank you. Do we know the situation that presents with these individuals coming to the motels? Do we know if they have been evicted due to the moratorium, the lifting of the eviction moratorium? Do we have any figures at all that may represent folks that have been displaced as a result of that? We know for the Motel voucher program that I think one of the slides that I gave was also showed people by category. So we do have information on everybody that comes in about their situation and why they're homeless and they have to meet certain categories. So we do have some, but as far as the eviction moratorium, no. We don't know that people have been since the eviction moratorium. So I couldn't give you that straight data. I don't know if Director Phillips has anything in that area. The data that I would be speaking from would be data from the coordinated entry system or broadly not specific to the general systems emergency housing program. There is some information that we can pull which relates to someone's housing history and their past experiences of eviction. We don't have that data this morning and it would take some time to work with the coalition that homelessness together. I am happy to see what information we have, even if it can't answer exactly the question you're looking for could help. Okay. I mean, the reason I ask is that we have been presented with information that there was a real considerable spike in individuals that were displaced as a result of the moratorium being lifted. Well, thank you. If you can pull anything out for us, that would be great. Payments that were made, the emergency payments in July and the recent ones. One of the issues that one of the questions that came up way back then seems like so long ago was how many of these folks were quote-unquote unbanked so that they had to receive a check and they had to have help perhaps getting the checks cashed. I mean, was that something that came to fruition, a worry that came to fruition in in terms of safety issues, theft issues that happened with those payments, especially going back into the shelter system? Sure. We did not see any safety and theft issues that I'm aware of with those two checks being sent out. The first group was a large group and we learned from that that what we needed to do was provide people's bank, because that is where the state of Vermont banks, so all of the checks were actually drawn on peoples. We needed to provide them with people in our system for them to call when someone was in the lobby to verify identity because the lack of identity proved to be a stumbling block as well. So they were unbanked but we thought we had solved that by saying people could go to people's bank but then there was an identity problem. So we had people, the bank personnel would put the person on the phone with our staff and we'd have them answer some questions that only they would know from our system and then we approved them to authorize the payment. So it ended up working well and we didn't have any problems from that. Some people, there were lines at some of the people's banks where they got their checks and walked down the road together. Representative Blumlee. Thanks. I'm just curious when looking at these numbers it appears that half of or nearly half of the folks who are housed through the program fall into the category of those living with disabilities and I'm just wondering is that a, is that typical given the GA history? Yes, that's our largest group and has been all along. And what kind of supports do those folks get what's possible through, you know, something like the GA program? So the Motel Voucher program really isn't the support piece, so we're providing the room and then I think that this might be a good segue and to Director Phillips and some of the coordinated entry and the case management connections and the services out in the field if that's all right. Absolutely. As I share some other information, happy to talk about it, but service funding to support community organizations that provide housing navigation services and other motel-based outreach and support services. Generally, we are not the Department of Aging and Independent Living and we are not the Department of Mental Health and we are funding organizations who are making connections with people and then helping them to access resources, for instance, choices for care or some or residential care settings or connect to a mental health agency that may be able to do an assessment to determine eligibility for other resources. So we do have some providers who are so we would call that more like outreach and referral services, right, and then they can support people in engaging in those other systems of care, but rather than creating sort of a parallel system of care for mental health and disability services, the role of our housing crisis response agencies is to connect people to those. That's generally how we would support and fund that. We are right now funding housing navigation services and motel-based services through essentially three different programs. One is we have some contracts that we call non-congregate wraparound service contracts. Those are FEMA reimbursed and we have two organizations at the height. We had, you know, close to a dozen organizations receiving funding through those contracts. They've been moved on to other funding sources and programs that were more appropriate or they've changed their model and so on, but we have two organizations still funded that way. We also have a number of organizations receiving funding through that what we're operating an ERAP housing stability services program with ERAP funds that can provide a range of supports and services that are applying or intending to apply for ERAP financial assistance, including that program funds a range of services and supports, including help for people I'm referring to as housing navigation services, which is help for people housing search and placement support, help with help to find housing, help to access housing resources, help develop a housing plan and housing goal and take steps on that. That's housing navigation services. Our ERAP housing stability services program also funds LAM or liaison supports of range of outreach and application assistance for the general also supports legal services and Vermont legal aid work around. And then we're also funding motel based services and outreach services under the housing opportunity grant program, including, for instance, CBOEO's CORA outreach team, which is providing outreach, including Upper Valley Haven, which has two full-time staff members who do a circuit of rotation of on base services in the Upper Valley region for folks in motels. We have a variety of models and all of those together are supporting folks being in total. I have a picture. I do have some other information I want to share about where we've been and where we're going and data we have around coordinate entry, but I'll pass for a second before I go into that testimony. Great. And Chip, last question here before and let Sarah do her thing and then we need to move on. Okay. I can hold that question. Thanks. And keep moving on. That's fine. I'll start with a moment that feels more positive, which is that between the fall of 2020 and the fall of 2021, we collectively in the state of Vermont, no one program, no one department helped 1,300 households to exit homelessness. That's more than we have ever done in the state of Vermont. It's certainly not enough for us to rest our laurels on. We have a lot more work to do, but it feels incredible to think that we helped 1,300 households exit to permanent housing. I want to be clear when I say permanent housing, that that's not always referring to someone with a lease. We understand that permanent housing can be reunifying with family or friends that you can stay with for a long time. It also means for a few households home ownership. It meant for some households permanent supported housing where they have long term home based support services to help them keep housing because of their higher level of needs. And it also does mean renting. It means renting with a subsidy. It means renting without a subsidy. It means renting with support services and renting without support services. And we have that information because of coordinated entry and the way that we track and share information across the whole system of care, which is not just TA. We do know that more than half of those folks who exited to permanent housing, about 700 households did, were able to access subsidized housing either through a temporary rental assistance program like the CARES housing voucher program or through Section 8 or VASH or any of the other resources that we have available in our system. And this is incredible. And I want folks to just recognize that that represents a substantial increase over what we've done historically in a one year timeframe. And it took an incredible amount of effort of organizations across the state working together and in communities to achieve that. And those organizations are still doing that work. I also want to say we were able to do it because we made massive investments as a state in bringing rental units back online that had been taken offline due to code issues program and also because we made substantial investments in building permanent housing that's dedicated for people. Without those units, we wouldn't have been able to rehouse them. Part of that work is that we launched the largest rapid rehousing initiative the state has ever seen with our ESG CARES funds, providing rental assistance and housing support services to more than 400 households, mostly families who exited from homelessness. I'm really excited to say that nearly 100 of those households have received a housing choice voucher through a partnership with the Vermont State Housing Authority, which turns that temporary rental assistance into a permanent voucher. We also launched the Rapid Resolution Housing Initiative, which folks have referred to, which used CRS funds. Those funds have ended and part of our BAA request includes funds to continue this initiative, which we see as incredibly successful. Rapid Resolution Housing Initiative helped more than 700 households who received this really flexible pool of funds to support their housing plan. So the crux of whether something was allowable is does it help you exit homelessness into a safe housing option? And does it help you do that quickly, immediately? And so those funds though have been used to support a range of costs. And again, this was before we had ERAP and the amazing amount of funds that have come into the state to support a range of costs to rehouse people. Rapid Resolution funds can help folks purchase a car, it can help with transportation, it can help your uncle Jim renovate his home to be able to support you to stay there, it can help rent land, it can pay program fees. It does sometimes support traditional housing costs as well. It helps pay down back debt that may be preventing you from getting housing. Really great tool in our tool belt that we know our field wants to continue with. We also partner closely with BHCB and our housing development colleagues around the new housing for homelessness and around the shelter renovation work that happened that allowed shelters to reopen and return to higher capacity. Our shelters serve around 500 households in the state only varies based on COVID situations that's happening, this impacting shelters. Generally speaking, that amount of capacity is higher than we had pre COVID. We have partnered with BHCB around the home renovation work through VHIP to ensure that we can place homeless households into renovated apartments in a private market. If your support, we expand a family supportive housing. We still have two districts where we don't have family supportive housing but otherwise we're serving substantially more households in that program. We did expand motel-based and housing navigation services and including the launch of the EREP Housing Stability Services Program. Some quick data for you and this includes Chittenden County looking again between fall of 2020 and fall of 2021. I don't have the most recent coordinated entry data but generally this tracks attracts. So of households from the part we're homeless during that time period we're in the coordinate entry system. Again that would be people who are unsheltered, people in GA, people in emergency shelter. Occasionally includes a small amount of folks who are sort of imminently homeless as well. We know that 26 percent of households report a substance disorder. We know that half of households report someone with a mental health disorder. We know that a quarter of households report a chronic health condition and a third of households report that's a huge, huge amount of households sometimes dealing with more than one disability within the household. We also know that roughly 10 percent of households are returning to homelessness so it doesn't speak to GA specifically in the turn of that program but if we look over the course of the year who is participating in coordinate entry who was the best and was placed then we know that about 10 percent households within that year are coming back into the system. We also know that folks with disabilities just take longer to house. They spend a longer time in our system of care than people without disabilities. So just kind of looking forward part of our BAA request is a request to continue the Rapid Resolution Housing Initiative Fund. You'll see that in there. Part of it is to support transportation for households either through the Economic Services Division or through community partners who are able to help arrange transportation. In the case where transportation is the barrier for people to access emergency housing or emergency shelter we want to be able to coordinate and arrange and pay for that transportation. It also part of our plan includes establishing a statewide rental risk mitigation program. We've been working really closely with the Vermont Housing Finance Agency and the State Housing Authority, Vermont State Housing Authority, and the Department of Housing and Community Development to build out this program largely modeled on what the state of Washington is and we hope to be able to launch something in Quarter 4. And then we also would like very much to expand shelter capacity where we have needs. We have done, we are very much in conversation with organizations and communities where they have interest in doing that. There are a lot of challenges to moving forward new projects. We have both formally and informally invited proposals from organizations and interested parties who want to do more whether it's do more to provide services to people in motels or do more to expand emergency shelter or expand current projects or start new projects. We issued a formal memo yesterday inviting proposals which also includes outreach to folks who are un-sheltered and we will review those preliminary proposals as they come in and identify the appropriate program or department to fund proposals. I have to be realistic and say that I don't hear a lot from my colleagues across all the systems of care that they can do more right now. I think they're really stretched but we want to be clear that where there's interest and willingness we are partners in supporting people with technical assistance and funding to build out those projects. I'll pause there and take questions. I think that's great. I think the reminder as always has been the case with rehousing the homeless is that we need to take a moment to appreciate the efforts that have been done and the successes that have occurred even with all the bumps in the road and so thank you for doing that for us. Representative Bloomly? Well I echo that Sarah. Thank you and all your staff. I am and all the providers. One of the things that I hear you when you talk about the capacity of service providers to meet demand for services and I'm wondering what I know that this is not part of the BAA request to us but I wonder if in fact there is funding that AHS is providing to those service providers to boost salaries for folks working at you know CODS etc to be able to attract or retain the folks that they've got. Folks might remember that you substantial boost in our homeless assistance funding for community partners last year to expand services expand shelter capacity support new operating budgets for shelters and we did use some of those funds are absolutely being used to increase wages and whether we did it initially through someone our program cycle runs on the July 1 cycle so certainly July 1 some organizations on increase we have reached out and talked with many of our providers and invited them to bring to the table a request for additional funding to increase salaries whether that be through the ERAP program through the CARES housing voucher program or through the housing opportunity grant program and then in the memo that I mentioned where we took a more formal step to invite proposals we did invite people to specifically reach out and ask for funding to enhance their current projects to increase wages there is not a single provider that we work with that we have a need station to ask us we have increased wages as as needed and we are able to do that and absolutely really appreciate what you're saying in terms of the wages in the human service field particularly in the shelter field have been low for many many years and staff retention and recruiting qualified staff is really critical to those programs. Great Trisha and Sarah thank you I'm going to take a five minute break right now and we'll be back at 10.01


Okay, everybody, so it's time to continue, let's welcome our next presenter, David Baczovacic. Okay, I will come to you here. So basically I am David Baczovacic and I will speak about how we are duckizing Jebus products, basically it's will describe how we manage to deliver Jebus products, specialy for OpenShift in my team and we will talk about following topics. It will be how we manage the profiles, how we handling layers, how we configuring images, how we testing them, version them and also some notes about documentation because documentation is pretty important for us and with OpenShift it's because images are pretty complex and you need to know a right way to use it. So also it will not be only about processes much more, it will be about our custom tools, our custom stuff what we are doing and what we are developing to manage all of these topics. So, let's start. First, managing the profiles. Basically when we started it was pretty easy, we just use plain profiles and it worked well. But time to time it happens that we get new images and we need to support a lot of stuff. Now we have many products, we are shipping EAP, we are shipping images based on EAP, like decision server, process server and so on. We also shipping Tomcat or enterprise web server and this makes us to think about it more because basically we need also to share stuff between images because for example each of our images contains Java virtual machine. Our images also contain some OpenShift specific stuff and also some of our images are meant to be run standalone with our OpenShift. Basically these are used as a step before porting them to OpenShift. So, as you can see, the inheritance model is described here, basically we have some base image, then we install JVM, then we install all products like EAP or Tomcat as a standalone and then we add custom OpenShift layer which just adds a lot of OpenShift stuff, scrapes and so on. So, basically you can also find this layering model as an inheritance model in upstream for Wildfly and all other J-Boss stuff. So, we even try to use this stuff which we are developing for J-Boss as a product to use in upstream but it takes some time and it will happen in future. So, also for us the biggest issue what was starting to be was inheritance model. Basically in the beginning we have just three, so basically each image has one parent and all the stuff just go nicely, so basically we take base image, created some labels, environmental labels there, inserted some J-Boss user, that was fine. In the next layer we just installed OpenGDK, configured it. It was everything was good, nice, then EAP, then some OpenShift layers. But when we went to the need of shipping for example decision server which is based on EAP or J-Boss data grid, it started to be really messy because we wanted to ship these products as a standalone images which should be based on EAP standalone. Also, we needed OpenShift layer there, but OpenShift layer was already in OpenShift EAP server. So, we basically had two parents, two Docker images, two layers which we needed to match, which we need to reuse the code because if the first approach with Dockerfile just ended in a lot of duplication stuff in Dockerfile, which was pretty hard to maintain. And it ended up with a lot of our time spent only by visiting Dockerfiles, looking if everything is okay. And even stuff like respawning images for security reasons or installing security fixes updates was a pain because it introduced some errors, some typos. So, it was not nice. So, basically, we've decided that we need to do something better. So, we created a tool which is called DOGAN, just Dockerfile generator. It's upstream project, it lives on GitHub, it's even Dockerized so you can just run it from a container. And what is it? It is just simple templating solution for Dockerfiles. It's really easy, it's ginger-based. I will show you how it looks in a few seconds. There is some code snipplet. But, basically, what it tries for us to fix is layering an inheritance code reuse model. Because we will still have a lot of duplication in our Dockerfiles because Dockerfiles are just generated from DOGAN. But, it doesn't care about it because Dockerfiles are just generated, are the products and are not stored in repositories and so on. So, they are not important for us now. They can be important for you as a customer if you want to extend it. But, for us internally, it's not what we versioned. I can show you how it looks in reality. Basically, as you can see, we have some ginger template, which is part and library. By the way, do you know anyone who knows ginger or using some templating solution? OK. So, I will explain a little bit more. So, basically, this framework works like that you have one generic file. We just contain some description, contain some keywords, and you have another file, which is just values for that keyword. So, basically, what DOGAN is doing is that it consumes this, we call it descriptor. This is for our image for installing GDK. And it applies it to this template. So, nothing really hard, nothing much. Also, DOGAN can do more stuff. You can see it can input some scripts and run them in a container in a build. It can just inject some RPMs, because, for example, if we need to respon image or install some security in fixes, basically, we need to wait for them to appear in some repository or some internal snapshot of repository. But in some cases, this takes some time. And we need a way to test if the fix is working. So, basically, if we are responing the image, we are taking some beta releases or pre releases, injecting them to the image, installing them via DOGAN and trying to run our test, put them to the QE and all the stuff. So, this is basically how this stuff works. As I said, you can find it upstream. You can see the repository, you can clone it, you can hack on it. Every effort is welcome. So, what was another problem? It was layering, because each instruction in a Dockerfile it just creates some layer, even the metadata instructions. And with a lot of layers, images just are big and hard to deal with. But also, layering is good, because it enables you to reuse some of your code, make builds quicker and so on. So, basically, we needed to find a solution how to make layering good. So, we don't have a lot of layers, but also we don't have... We don't miss some opportunity to share stuff. So, we had two options. Basically, we could try to combine every command to one command. So, basically, we will have one label command, one environment command, one run command in Dockerfile. It can work, but it's a little bit weird. And sometimes we need to run some script in a Docker image during the build. But we are different user. Typicaly, we are switching to user root and our application user. So, it was not nice. So, another option was to squash layers. Basically, looking at upstream, looking at some Docker issues and Docker approach, they are not interested in having anything about squashing in Docker, even to be able to have some instruction in Dockerfile to mark some blocks that should be in one layer. There is a long discussion, but it was poor request and all the stuff was closed. So, my colleague, Marie Goldman, just go and write some custom tool. It's Docker scripts. It's pretty nice script, which is able to squash layers. It's maintained, it's used, and all of the images produced by Red Hat by our team are squashed by this tool, so it's proven by usage. Also, what's great, it's now even able to squash new Docker image format, which was introduced in version 9.10. Also, this tool is pretty nice. It's just work, basically, the way that is to take the layers from the Dockerdemon, it just look inside, open the tile files, merge them, remove the necessary stuff and just put it back and upload back to the Dockerdemon. Only bad stuff is that it's really, really high demand on I.O., so basically it usually takes some time, and if you are running parallel build, you can run into some Docker box that Docker is unresponsive, and if Docker is unresponsive, it's usually just time-outing your commands without, and you cannot really see what's happening. It's just not good written in this way, so be aware, just not try to squash multiple images at a time. So, next stuff. What we really needed to do is that we need to configure images, and we are configuring really, really a lot of images and a lot of stuff in images. Now, as an example, you can see for EAP OpenShift image. What our configuration stuff is able to do is that it can consume some environment variables you pass to image or OpenShift pass to the image, and for example, create data sources, create connections to some messaging like ActiveMQ. We support STI deployments, inject some assemblescript. Do you know what is STI, STI? OK. This is a pretty nice feature of OpenShift which just enables you to take, for example, EAP OpenShift image, and you have some application you want to run it inside. So, basically in OpenShift you just put URL to your Git repository or any repository, and OpenShift will just use EAP image and run STI for it. It will create another image in which it will build your application via Maven or via build system you specify, collect the artifacts, deploy it to EAP, and run the pod inside OpenShift. So, it just enables you to quickly deploy a lot of other stuff. Also, we support clustering, which some self-discovery, so we need to insert some stuff like our custom clustering providers and way to find another instances. There is really a lot of stuff to do. Also, we have two types of configuration in images. We have build time configuration, which is typically the stuff you run via a local build. So, this is just... It just configures some stuff, which is the same for all. It can inject some logging providers. It injects Geolokia, configures it. It just configures the image the way we want it on the OpenShift, so we are removing or disabling console and all the stuff the image has in base. But also, there is runtime configuration. And runtime configuration is getting to be more and more interesting. Because what is that? It's when you start a container and that's the fancy stuff, like defining the data source or just connecting to active MQ, deploying applications, setting up SSL. You can even inject some secrets. You really, really lot of stuff. And this makes the image usable for a wider audience, because it enables you to use our image with our basing on it. You will just configure it when it's run. So, how we did it? Our first approach was using shell scripts. It was looking great, because everyone was able to write it. Everyone was able to hack it. It was easy to see, easy to extend. But there are some approaches like that. Almost every configuration for Jbos Middleware is in XML file. And editing XML files via shell script is a little bit messy. You can do it. We are doing it for now, but the code is not so nice. Maybe it's a little bit ugly, but it works. Also, we started to think about another way. For example, how to enable users to inject the scripts, its own script and to let them to configure our images. Because we just provide some basic stuff, but maybe someone wants to tweak the EAP configuration a little, but he has two options, basically. He can use our image and base on it and replace, for example, standalone XML file for EAP bar by his own, which will suit him well. But if you do it just in a bad way, you will be unable to use our configure scripts because it will not work on customer specified configuration file. Another option is to enable him to inject the stuff into the image in a runtime and let him to run his code to configure some basic stuff. We started to experiment with Python and created some project. It's just called CCT, which means Containers Configuration Tool. It tries to solve some stuff. Basically, we've moved from Bash to Python because a lot of stuff is easier to do with Python because there is a better API. Also, it's designed to be run as entry point to the image. Do you know the purpose of the entry point? Basically, in the profiles, you can have two things. There is command instruction, which is default command, which will be run, and there is also entry point, which typically is set to bin SH, which is just default interpreter, which is used for the command. Basically, CCT is designed to work as entry point. If you use it in an image, you put it in an entry point, and then it just works in the way that when the container is spawned, the CCT is spawned. It configures the EAP or any stuff in the image. And then it's just execs itself to the desired product, desired process. Basically, from EAP, it's just executing EAP, replacing itself with EAP. Basically, your EAP will be bit one and everything will be nice, and there will be no trace of CCT in your processes. Also, it's Python, so everything is easily possible. It's able to fetch Python code. It's able to just get resources. Basically, if you put any file next to the Python class, you are downloading. It will be just found. It will be used as a configuration snippets. Using Python, all the stuff is really better coded and then shell script is there. There is even better co-chairing because it's using inheritance and all the stuff. I will show you how it looks. So, basically, I will just only scroll a little. I will show this later. So, basically how it works. It has some file which is describing what you need to do. You can use to configure OpenShift EAP image. You can specify some environment variables. You can use it. It's just basic YAML. You can see that there is some stuff which is run on the CCT. Basically, you can see that it's running OpenShift module. It's OpenShift class and the mapping is really easy. Every method in that class is mapped to the name here. Basically, what you specify here is just execute same method from the right module and it passes parameters. Basically, it's really easy. It evens contains it's self-documenting, so it contains some modules. You can even ask CCT for some help. Just a little bit, I will just enlarge it and you can see that CCT describe itself. It can describe modules, which parameter is using, and so on. Basically, this tool is what we are now just considering to use in the images. We are making some proof of concept on it. It's public repo and if you are interested in it, look at it and hack it a little. Next up is testing. Testing is a little bit weird team, a little bit weird topic for containers because not many people are testing them in a way we do. Basically, we are trying to make something like unit test for Docker because we needed to ship Docker files to QE guys, the images, the containers, all the stuff, but we wanted to ship it in a way that it's a little bit tested, so they are not... We can be sure that even basic stuff works, like that the container is able to start, that the containers contains write labels, it generates write configuration files and so on. Basically, there was one effort in Red Hat for this stuff. It's called CTF. It's container testing framework. It's based on behave, which is another Python library. It's using garking grammar.  Okay. Basically, maybe you know Cucumber, which is similar project. It's just behavior-driven development when you try to write tests in this way. So basically, it tries to use something like native language for your test.  So we started to use this tool and I will show you how it looks in more deep state. I hope it's readable. You can now see some of our tests, which is the features file. Basically, this is the way how behave works. You have some features files, which contain feature and scenarios and some steps. And also you have Python files, which is just normal Python script, which is annotated or decorated in Python. It's better. And you can see if you decorate any function, you can just use it in a test file, in a feature file in a test. So this enables us to really share a lot of stuff, because we created some library of Python functions, which are able to start containers, to look inside containers, grab file in containers, all copy files, put files from host to container and back, start some processes in containers and scripts. We have a lot of stuff and it's parametrized. So you can see that we can really use the stuff in our tests. So basically, it's really, really, really easy. You can see stuff like annotation, which uses parameters. So you can even parametrize your tests. So it enables you to write a pretty generic test suite and use it in a very easy way. And it also enables you to write a new test only by using feature files, not touching the Python. So basically almost anyone in your team, even some managers and other guys are able to run your test or to understand them. Another big advantage of this framework is that you can write the test correctly, the names, scenarios correctly and the steps correctly. If something fails, you can really see what failed and what impact it will have on your image. So that's stuff about CTF. I think that this is a really interesting project and what is really good about it is that it's created about sharing the test and sharing the Python stuff. Because in CTF every Python module, every Python class with test is just git repository and CTF is able to manage them.  It's just almost better to include. So another big part which we needed to do is versioning. Versioning with docker files and docker images, it seemed easy. But it was not that easy in the end. Because if you are publishing some product and it can be some great software you are basically just have version of this software. But with docker it's little bit different because you are not shipping only the software. You are shipping image with that software and you need to version two things. Because you have version of your product inside the image and you have version of the image. So our final solution which is just currently used and you will see it in our Red Hat OpenShift in the middleware J Boss images is this kind of solution. We have just product family. We have a size version of the product. We are not interested in micro versions because we are automatically updating them. They should not have any impact on functionality and they are typically for security and all these stuff. So you want to have them. Also we are saying some type of the image that is designed for OpenShift and we have the image version for us which enables us to really make incompatible changes in EAP64 image. It can happen time to time. We have need for this few months ago when OpenShift was changing requirements to specify user ID to user instruction in the profile instant of username. This was pretty bad for us because we were using usernames there. So the images wasn't able to be run on OpenShift so we needed to bump this number. Also there is another big part of our work. It's documentation. The best documentation is fresh one and actual one and the one with the right stuff inside. But it's hard to do it and we are engineers we don't like to write documentation typically. So we need to find a way how to have a good documentation with not much effort put inside. So we decided because we are using DogM for generating Dockerfiles that we can put some stuff like descriptions some example values and we can generate documentation from the sources. So basically almost all of our documentation is generated it's generated using of a struct and it's just self-maintained so we can see if anything change in the image it's almost instantly changed in documentation. So this is just some summary it enabled for us. If we take all these approaches together we are now able to automatically test all of our images during the builds. We can test pull request, we can see if anything breaks really really fast. Also with every build we have a fresh documentation. So our documentation is always up to date to current images. So we can provide documentation to doc team and they can just consume it. Also another benefit which is pretty important for us is that with templating all of our Dockerfiles look same so we have same order of instruction environmental variables and labels defined in same order. So everything looks really nice it's easy to do and you can really really see the changes quickly if you are looking at Dockerfiles. Also with DogM, CCT the learning stuff we are really really able to share all of our scripts or of our configuration stuff to our images. So we don't have a duplication of code in our repository. So this is really really good for maintenance and this really enables us to spend a lot of time by delivering new stuff not by maintaining testing and doing the boring work. So I want to thank you and do you have any questions? Basically this is part of the documentation and also your relative documentation should be in change lock label of the image because atomic up contains some change lock label define so we are trying to use it but basically what's changed is in the documentation. It's not in the image inside because it's hard to put it somewhere it can be easy to put it in standalone and for example have default commands to list it but it's pretty hard in OpenShift that it's not a good way to show something about the image. All tools I don't think that all are in brew but Docker scripts the squashing one this one I'm not sure if it's in brew but it's part of OpenShift service to use internally and it's a tool you can really use. I think it's part of Fedora now and it's on PiPi but I don't think it's built in brew but the configuration framework will be built in brew because it will be RPM based and installed but we are using this in production and we are maintaining it so you are free to use it and even if you will have any troubles just to put any issue to the upstream and we are really using upstream and we are not patching the versions and we are working on the GitHub repositories so you can reach us there Any other question? In upstream like in this course here on GitHub we still have this layer that you've just described like first install the base then install Java because we have some request to use a different Java oracle Java or use IDM Java inside for JBOS but in a container so is that possible to do with just changing this middle layer? Yeah, but you have to rebuild all the images but basically what you will do you will just change one line and it will work Okay? Have you thought about mounting Java on another container? Yes, we were thinking about it a little but for now we are just for the OpenGDK and because I think that for us it's pretty hard to ship oracle GVM in image or something like that and you know just using just concatenating two images I think that's the stuff the customer needs to do because I don't think for example using oracle Java I don't think that you even can fetch it automatically so you have to have some cookie and accept some Yeah, you can do it We don't have it in documentation and I think this should be part of OpenShift documentation for all images, not about express images because but yeah, that's a good idea and I think that we should document it in upstream for world fly 2 because we are managing that We have to try now Yeah I don't understand that you can basically do all the same things Yeah and basically with CCT it's even easier because you will just inject the RPM with Java it will automatically find it install it and CCT has support for alternatives so you will just specify the version so it's a really one line command for you Okay Yeah, basically that's I think that it's what we are doing and all our tools are integrated and do each part but yeah that was one of approach we considered but you know replacing Dockerfiles and creating custom builders it's hard but I think it's a good idea to do it because there is Racket, there is OpenContaining specification all the stuff just have one tool which can build container for any provider and to get rid of Dockerfile because you know I think that Dockerfile is nice it enables containers to spread but now it's better limiting Okay, any other question? Okay, so thank you 1, 2, 1, 2


I've been meaning to do a review of this book for some time and sadly it's taking me a little bit of time to get around to it but I do I do definitely want to cover it and I highly recommend it and I will link below to information about the book and about the author and that the book is unveiled by Yasmin Muhammad. Now Yasmin is someone I have a great deal of admiration for and whilst I've not met her in person we have chatted online on several occasions and I have done a podcast with her I don't quite a few years ago I've got it it's been a long journey so Yasmin if you're watching this I hope you're doing well congratulations on the book fantastic fantastic read and in review of the book just a few things three particular points that that jump to mind first of all is it's a very personal story from Yasmin she's telling her own story and sadly it's not an unfamiliar story it's a story of horrific abuse and the horrific abuse that a lot of women suffer in Islamic communities including Islamic communities in the west because Yasmin comes from an Egyptian background but is Canadian and is an activist in Canada the cruelty that she was subjected to is quite extraordinary and much of it was what the hands of her mother and this raises a very interesting topic and it's one that comes up quite frequently and that is that the perpetuation of cruelty in the Islamic world is often at the hands of the mother to the daughter for example FGM will often be almost always carried out by women it's the mother will favor her sons over her daughters and treat the daughters appallingly treat her daughter in law appallingly and it's absolutely true to say this the perpetuation of cruelty to women is carried down not exclusively obviously I mean we have domestic violence male violence against women is the norm in Islamic society it's not exclusively but this horrific treatment from mother to daughter mother and law to daughter in law is not unheard of certainly not so whilst I'm no psychiatrist let me just give a little my view on why this is I've said many times that men who grow up in the Muslim world grow up believing that women are nothing essentially that we are less than animals subhuman is an understatement we can be kicked around pushed around we have no intelligence no no value other than our ability to give birth that's it men are raised to see women in this way but here's the thing so are women women are also raised to see themselves in this way and there is little as potent or destructive in this life as self-hatred it is probably the most harmful destructive kind of hatred and women are from birth instilled with absolute with with self-contempt that is almost indescribable and it is all backed up by the Quran let's not forget and to say that the Quran is well held in high regard is also something of an understatement so when the Quran tells girls that they are worthless they believe it and that self-hatred grows and manifests often not always but sometimes in mistreatment of others and particularly mistreatment of others of your own sex and also there's an element of trying to seize a bit of power if a woman goes along with the misogyny and mistreats other women she may gain back just that little bit of power by going along rather than rebelling against the system she accepts it she sends it onwards in order to legitimize it she was treated appallingly therefore others will be treated appallingly it's a horrible aspect of humanity but it is an aspect of humanity and it starts from self-hatred and the self-hatred that girls are taught from birth from the Quran that's my opinion on it anyway finally an aspect of this book which really stands out for me is well it's two parts of this I guess one is the disappointment that Yasmin expresses throughout and I've seen her express on Twitter and elsewhere for a long long time the disappointment at the West and our absolute failure to stand by what we say we believe our laws say we believe in gender equality our laws say that you know a man should never beat up his wife and vice versa but men are bigger let's you know let's be serious about it you know our laws say one thing but then we behave a completely different way when people of another ethnicity or another skin color or another background are in our countries we have effectively left Muslim women that Muslim women like Yasmin who's obviously now an ex-Muslim Muslim women like Yasmin to fight on their own you know when she's fighting against this in Canada she's not getting the support of Canadian feminists she's not getting the support of Western feminists and you don't have to be a feminist either to know that the treatment of women in Islam is horrific and wrong but she's not getting any of that support in fact what's happening is that all the support is going to the imams and the mullers and all the people she is fighting against they're the ones being treated as victims and they're the ones getting our support we have completely betrayed her and others like her and not just women either apostates gay people whoever it may be who is suffering inside the Muslim communities inside the West we have turned our backs on them while saying we believe in human rights and racial equality etc a complete and total betrayal very final point is how much how open and honest Yasmin is about the hate directed now the direction of hate we're always told aren't we that it's the white Westerner whose hatred of non-whites is the cause of all this actually we all know that that's simply not true of course there are white people who are nasty as in anywhere else but we know that it isn't white people are not overwhelmingly hateful towards non-white people that is a disgraceful position in fact the opposite is true and Yasmin talks about the fact that it is the hatred coming from the Muslim side towards the non-Muslim for the white majority for example but not exclusively the white majority the hatred is in fact in this direction and not in this direction and I would swear by that because I've seen it throughout the years it isn't white people's hatred of Muslims that's the problem it's Muslims hatred of white people that is the truth of it and it's a much bigger problem than vice versa fascinating book once again Yasmin congratulations it was heart-wrenching to read your story I'm glad that you're happy now and that you are settled and I hope that you the rest of your life is as happy as you deserve it to be well done on getting through what must have been just unimaginably horrific Yasmin if you fancy hooking up for another podcast another chat do give me a shout everyone else read this book it is it's an eye opener it's a heart-wrencher but it will affect you


This 2006 Dodge Charger SRT8 is stock number 11801Z. We are here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. You're new and used sports car and Dodge Charger headquarters. Today we are checking out this extremely low mileage charger. It has the 6.1 liter V8 Hemi motor, which pumps out 425 horsepower. This car has been fully-safetyed and inspected by our service shop. It has a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids have been checked and topped off. And this car is 100% ready to go. Infernal red crystal is the color. We shoot all of our videos in 1080p 60 frames per second. So if you have HD capabilities on your computer, tablet, or smartphone device, turn them on right now because it is definitely your best way to check out the quality and condition of the car before seeing it in person. And if you'd like to subscribe to our YouTube channel to see daily videos of all of our new and used inventory in the upper right hand part or upper lower left hand part of the screen is a subscribe button. It's a gold subscribe button. So click that comes with the 20 inch polished and painted aluminum rims. And it has the Brembo brakes on it has Goodyear Eagle F1 245 45R20s. These tires have just about all the tread left. This car only has 2200 miles on it. Front fenders in nice shape. Headlight lenses are crystal clear. Front bumper is in excellent condition. No scuff scrapes or cracks on that. The hood is in exceptionally nice condition as well. Pastiner side front fender looks really good too. And the passenger side rim, no major scuffs or scrapes on that. As you go down this side of the car, take note of how clean the body is, how reflective and mirror like that paint is. We take these HD videos. So if you are far away or even if you're close by and just cannot make the trip down but you're still interested in purchasing the car, you can see the car, hear the car and of confidence in the vehicle that you're looking at before you even get here. So that when you do get here, there's absolutely no surprises. Does have the power sunroof. Very clean down that side. You can see any dents or dings on the doors. This back rim is in exceptionally nice condition as well. And you get the Brembo brakes back here too. Back tires have just as much tread as the front tires. And coming around to the back of the vehicle, rear bumper is in great shape as the dual rear exhaust. The deck lid and the spoiler are in excellent condition too. Tail lights are super clear. Rear quarters in pretty nice shape. And for full disclosure, this back rim, nice condition as well. Down the rest of the side of the car looks really good. Power mirrors. And we'll get to the interior in just a second because those seats in that interior is like new. Back trunk area is very clean. It does come with the kicker subwoofer. And it does come with a tire inflator kit. And this is also where the battery's at. Those seats do fold down for extra storage. Really a clean car. Check out this interior. You get the black and gray leather and suede seats.  And as we hop inside the car here, you can see 2,224 miles.  Turn the ignition on so we can check out the radio and everything. You get the leather wrapped steering wheel, information center and nav controls on the right. Audio controls and information center controls on the left. This one has the factory navigation system, the 6 disc CD changer, AM FM radio, and electronic stability program.  I don't think that seat's ever been sat in. Get the SRT stitched into the headrest. The headliner is absolutely perfect. And the power sunroof up there is a nice addition. Home link buttons for your garage door security systems and lane systems. Has Bluetooth Uconnect controls right there. We'll take a quick look at the back seats and then we'll start it up. Check out under the hood. Check out the exhaust.  No rips, no tears. This car has never been smoked in. Child safety locks even has the old Tager on it, premium brand leather. Latch child safety system. These seats fold down like I said for extra storage and just an amazingly clean low mileage SRT-8 charger. We'll start it up. I'll even... Not too loud. Probably the stock exhaust. You can see there's no check engine lights or anything like that. We'll take a look under the hood. I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today and hopefully from this HD video. You've been able to tell just how clean this car is all the way around inside and out. Under the hood we have the 6.1 liter V8 Hemiborx. Engine bay is very clean, runs very smooth. Once again, this car has been fully safetyed and inspected by our service shop as a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids have been checked and tapped off. Shocks are doing a nice job holding that hood up as the true cold air intake. And this car is 100% ready to go. You can see just how nice and clear those headlights are. I would highly recommend this car from a quality and condition standpoint. And to see more pictures of this car, one of our other 450 new and used cars, trucks, SUVs, minivan, sports cars, challengers, chargers, Mustangs, Corvettes, Camaros, you name it. We've got to go to that website right there, www.summitauto.com. Full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations all at www.summitauto.com. And if you'd like to check out more HD videos, you can go to www.youtube.com. Remember to like, subscribe, and share on this video and all the videos that you see there. In fact, in a second, we'll see a link to subscribe to our YouTube channel in the upper left. A link to more Dodge Charger videos like this one in the upper right. A link to this vehicle in the lower left. And a link to one of our latest YouTube videos in the lower right. So click those, check us out. Remember to like, subscribe, click the bell notifications. And we look forward to helping with this Ultra Clean 2006 Dodge Charger SRT8 in Inferno Crystal Red Pearl. Thanks again for checking out the video.


Okay, good afternoon everybody, you're all very welcome to the Institute of International and European Affairs. As I do it myself I recommend everybody to switch your phones to silence. We encourage you to tweet in the usual way. We are on the record for the Tonnes-Thos keynote and the Q&A there after. There may not be a huge amount of time for Q&A. We have to finish it too, but the Q&A is under the Chatham House rule. So we are delighted to have the Tonnes-Thos here. I know the former colleague of mine in the Iraqis and I think throughout his professional career a huge interest in development in Africa and in human rights and we're delighted to have this opportunity to hear his view of the future and how this plays a crucial role in Ireland's foreign policy and indeed in the European Union's foreign policy. So to introduce the Tonnes-Thos I want to first of all ask you to welcome the head of Irish aid. Irish aid are in partnership with the IAA on this speaker series. So please could you give a welcome to Rory de Burkett. Thank you very much. I'm going to be very brief because in many ways the Tonnes-Thos is one of the best known people in Ireland. So it's very little I can say that anybody in the room doesn't know and he's also my boss so I can't say anything that he possibly should know but doesn't want to hear. No, I think look it's fantastic the Tonnes-Thos is here today because the topic is one that is very close to his heart. The Tonnes-Thos relationship with Africa long predates his assumption of the role of Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade. In fact when he was in other ministries he did his very best to extend their remit to Africa as well and I think you know that's testament to his personal interest in the relationship between Ireland and what is a very fascinating and rich continent and you know today you know the Tonnes-Thos is going to explore some of the richness of that relationship and it's one of a number of speeches he'd be giving this week around Ireland and Africa including tomorrow when we launch a public consultation on a new white paper for international development. So I think today you know when he speaks you'll hear something about the broader tapestry of our relationship with Africa and I think in many ways that reflects his own personal interest in the subject. I'll say no more because it's the Tonnes-Thos gig. Tonnes-Thos, good luck. Thank you Rory. Ambassadors and of course members and to Barry in particular thank you for the invitation to be here. This is an institute that is a really important part I think of our debating infrastructure in Ireland in the context of international and European affairs and continues to play an important role as it has done over the last 30 years. However at this time of potential great change in Ireland's place in the world, your thought leadership and the space this institute opens for debate I think is probably more important than ever. My theme today is the richness of the relationship between Ireland and Africa and the real and exciting possibilities that flow from it. In exploring this unconscious but over the last few years there have been many reminders of the interconnectedness of our world. In particular our place in Europe and its neighborhood of which of course Africa is such an important part. Africa is a place that is close to my heart, both personally and politically. I've explored it on my holidays, been there as a student many times and I visited many countries there in various ministries from defence in Mali to agriculture in a number of different African countries and of course now as a Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade most recently to Kenya to Ethiopia and what would have been to Somalia if it hadn't been for some difficult security issues at the time and of course I've been to Egypt as well and to other parts of North Africa. As a student I was at the peak of Africa at the top of Kilimanjaro on a memorable visit to that extraordinary part of your continent. Africa is a place that I find both challenging and exciting, a vibrant growing place at the centre of our future and I don't say that lightly. The vitality and potential of Africa's young people is undoubtedly its greatest resource. The reason why the former Ethiopian Prime Minister said to me when I met him last November in Addis Ababa that his view is that this century is Africa's century. Of course Ireland and Africa are not strangers to each other. We share a long and complex history of connection and interconnection. There are the frequently mentioned touchstones, the contributions of our missionaries, our continuing contribution of our NGOs and of course Ireland's development cooperation programme which many people in this room are rightly very proud. Perhaps sometimes there may be a tendency to imagine our relationship as primarily determined through this prism of solidarity. However, there is much more to our connections than we can and do value. Ireland and Africa have remained connected over the centuries by the innate Irish desire to travel and migrate to distant lands and to talk to other people and do our best to teach them. Often in search of a better life but also there were those motivated to be part of a larger project of justice and solidarity. I'm thinking of those women and men who have worked in rural Africa, saving lives and building communities. Their commitment to mother and child health has helped many tens of thousands of people and contributed to the development of healthcare systems in many, many countries. And those educators, those who worked in such a way touched the lives of so many. In my visits to Africa as a minister, I'm always struck by the number of senior people I've met who've been educated by an Irish teacher, a brother, sister, priest or nun, including the President of Kenya when I was last there who reminded me of his education which he said was something that I'm not sure I wanted at the time but perhaps I needed at the time. Often those they educate are not the great and the good but also the most vulnerable. And it's about changing lives through knowledge, through education, through development. Ireland's experience of colonialism and struggle for self-determination inspired a generation of African leaders, including Nelson Mandela, of course, being the most prominent, who recalled in his visit to Ireland in 1990 how inspirational the existence of the Irish state was in encouraging those struggling against apartheid. And in turn, Mandela has been an inspiration to us and to many around the world. It is fitting that tomorrow Kilmainham jail sees the opening of an exhibition to celebrate the centenary of Mandela's birth. The exhibition traces his life from prisoner to president and side by side charts the relationship between Ireland and South Africa through an extraordinary period in both of our histories. It documents the solidarity of anti-apartheid years and the role of Kader Asma, a man who we like to claim as one of our own and others in imagining a new South Africa before it became a reality. It reminds us that we established diplomatic relations 25 years ago, opening an Irish embassy in Pretoria only when the apartheid regime ended, and not before that. And it focuses a spotlight on our continuing relationship through arts, culture, business and investment both ways. And the enduring people to people links that define our relationship with South Africa. That solidarity and commitment to principle, that solidarity and commitment to principle demonstrated in relation to South Africa is one that continues to define our relationship with the continent as a whole. In many respects, the scale and diversity of Africa as a continent should prevent us from attempting to talk about this as one place. Which I know is something that always really irritates African ambassadors. It's a bit like when you go to the US and they talk about Europe as if Ireland and Hungary were the same place. And in many ways, the diversity on the continent of Africa is even more stark than on the continent of Europe. Africa is not a country. And yes, in our imagination, we often ascribe is the characteristics of one country. As I said, much the frustration of Africa's leading commentators and opinion formers. As a continent, it's complex, more complex than we perhaps appreciate at once prosperous and poor, peaceful and troubled, a place of great potential, but with interconnected and cyclical challenges that will take generations to overcome. In the decades since independence, we have worked with our African partners to support their post colonial projects of state building and development. Over this time, we have witnessed considerable progress in health and education services, and in the entrepreneurship of young Africans, striking a path towards their own prosperity. New challenges have come into focus, such as climate change and gender equality, where there are where there has been less progress and where urgent action is required if we are to secure a future for the next generation in their own home countries. Many African governments recognize that the way to change direction and unlock the inherent economic potential in their countries is to build a strong internal market for Africa. And increase intra Africa trade as a means of creating jobs and growth. Currently intra Africa trade accounts for only 12% of Africa's total trade, compared to 60% in Western Europe. There are interesting moves afoot to eliminate barriers to free trade across the continent. The Summers in Kigali last March agreed to launch the African continental free trade area. The largest such area agreed since the formation, the WTO. Ireland supports this initiative and through our development cooperation program and the EU is providing assistance to countries interested in joining. For example, through trademark East Africa. Additionally, our work on the development of value chains, support for small holder farmers and the building economies of scale to keep communities in preparation in an inclusive way to take advantage of coming opportunities that are undoubtedly there. An example of this is Ireland's support to potato farmers in Kenya, which I speak regularly to the Kenyan ambassador about, and to which we had such a fantastic conversation about when we were when we were in Kenya a number of months ago. The exchange of Irish seed known, a virus seed know how is helping increase Kenyan potato yields from five tons per hectare to something approaching the 60 tons per hectare that we generate here. You can imagine if we just got even halfway there. What that would do. Changing yields in a country from five tons to 30 tons a year transforms an agri food economy in a way that can be so valuable. Irish storage techniques are helping to preserve stocks, allowing investors to look at value added products. Last month, some Kenyan entrepreneurs were here to meet with potential Irish partners. Who knows Kenyans may yet grow to love Tato just as much as we do in Ireland. And perhaps in time it'll be Kenyan technology that's being imported back into Ireland to increase the yields that we currently enjoy. But it is true in general terms that for various reasons, our trading relationship with Africa is not as substantial as it is with most other regions or indeed as it could be and should be. Our history today is not limited to our future ambition, of course. As with our political and security relationships, the future of the European and African prosperity is inextricably intertwined and the economies of our continental southern neighbor represent huge potential for job creation and economic growth here in Ireland. I think we have much to learn from each other, not just in terms of trade and resources, but in the sharing of experiences and best practice. I'm personally very excited, for example, about the work of our embassy in Nairobi, which has developed a framework for agri-food cooperation between Ireland and Kenya that goes way beyond the simple potato, and which I was proud to launch last November. This approach goes beyond traditional development instruments and seeks to identify key requirements within the Kenyan agricultural sector which might be messed by Irish expertise matching the two in terms of getting, as farmers would say, some hybrid vigor from the two approaches. And the relationship should be a mutually beneficial one. Indeed, there is much that we in Ireland can learn from our African partners through a greater understanding of how our common objectives of creating jobs, growing business opportunities, and transforming lives can be pursued elsewhere. Who knows, given the weather we are experiencing and enjoying this summer, perhaps we have a lot to learn from Kenya on how to manage drought in years ahead, something we didn't think we'd be talking about in Ireland anytime soon. It's for that reason that I'm delighted today to formally announce that the sixth African Ireland Economic Forum will be held in Dublin on the 11th of October next. The forum has been running since 2011 and is the centerpiece of Ireland's economic engagement with countries across the African continent. It provides a unique opportunity to bring businesses, policymakers, and influencers together to share experiences and best practice with the aim of building long-standing and mutually beneficial partnerships. And really, that needs to be the theme of the future relationship between the EU as a whole and the African continent. It must be about partnerships as opposed to an unequal relationship where one is telling the other what to do and providing the money with which to do it. And that is what we will be doing this year, highlighting to Irish audiences the many and diverse business opportunities that exist across the African continent and providing the space for companies to come together face to face, strengthening existing relationships, and building new partnerships. This year we have chosen to focus on two specific and complementary topics. The agri-food sector, which we probably come to realize I'm partial to, and women in business, which I think is also an area where Ireland is starting to show global leadership and can do much more. On both of these subjects I'm convinced Irish companies have a wealth of experience to share with their African counterparts. Ireland's relationship with Africa has often seemed to focus on English-speaking countries, perhaps reflecting the spread of Irish missionaries, and understandably so. Our embassies have tended to be concentrated in east and southern Africa, with many of our NGOs and businesses also active in the same places. Our knowledge of and engagement with West Africa has tended to be more sporadic, anchored in Nigeria, Ghana, and Sierra Leone, with less attention to Francophone Africa. That is something which I hope to change, as the government moves to implement a strategy of doubling our global footprint or our global presence. Our embassy in Abuja will serve as a hub for engaging with and exploring opportunities to deepen bilateral relationships with the neighbouring Sahel region. We are upgrading our office in Liberia to a full embassy. That will happen next year. We need to look to expand our footprint into French-speaking West Africa, building on and from our existing relationships. We have a very solid platform that we can work from, but we shouldn't be limited to that footprint. And I think you will see in the coming years, Irish influence and Irish interests and Irish partnerships expanding into French-speaking Africa. We want to deepen our relationships with Africa in the context also of the Sustainable Development Goals, which Ireland brokered in the UN in partnership with Kenya. I think both countries are very proud to say. An important tool which will help us in this endeavour is the government's commitment to meeting the UN target of 0.7% of gross national income for development cooperation by 2030. Put that into a context because I know nobody really believes that we're going to do it until you actually see it happening. That means we have to move from spending about 720 million euros a year to spending about two and a half billion euros a year on an Irish aid programme over the space of 10 to 12 years. That is going to put significant stress and strain on the political system to be able to find a way of doing that. And I think we will need to start as we mean to continue in the context of the 2019 budget to get us started in that direction. We're currently less than 0.3% of a target that is more than double that figure in percentage terms and a lot more than double that figure in actual money. But I believe the Irish people will be with us on that as long as we ensure that we're giving value for money and as long as we ensure that we are really changing lives for the better in the context of an economy that can fund and support that level of ambition. I'm working on a new white paper on international development. The formal launch of the public consultation process towards that white paper will be tomorrow, the 12th of July. And I would encourage anybody with an interest in Ireland's relations with Africa to make a submission. It doesn't matter how detailed but we'd like to hear what you have to say to make sure that we are at least considering all the basis before we make decisions in terms of what areas we prioritise. Ireland is applying for membership of the African Development Bank, a process now underway. Joining the African Development Bank will see an Irish diplomat posted to the bank's headquarters in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, which I visited a number of years with a large business delegation and found to be a place of extraordinary opportunity for Ireland in the future. We do this at a time when the EU is looking to deepen its relationship with Africa. Something which I believe is essential as we cannot meet the interconnected challenges of our modern world without a more dynamic and deeply cooperative political relationship. The EU summit in Abidjan last November was an important moment in this regard. Negotiations will open shortly on a framework for the EU cooperation with Africa and also Caribbean and Pacific states getting these negotiations right will allow us to make progress on shared objectives. This is the post-colonial agreement. There is an opportunity in this regard to see how we can strengthen regional organisations and regional integration on the continent and also how we might build a more effective political dialogue between us. Given that Ireland shares with many African, with many countries in Africa, a lived history and experience of colonialism and of struggle for independence as well as being a latecomer to development in many ways, there may be times when we might help bridge gaps in these negotiations. Also as an English-speaking country at the European negotiating table, we may also be able to represent perspectives from our friends in Africa in a new and dynamic way. Our experience of conflict, of peace, of economic and social transformation inform our long-standing commitment to internationalism, to multilateralism and a rules-based global order. And to the United Nations in particular, this commitment is at the heart of the government's decision to campaign for an Irish seat on the UN Security Council in a few years' time. Our commitment to the UN is more than rhetoric. Over the more than 60 years of our membership, we have continuously worked at no small cost to ensure that the principles of the UN Charter are held, building and sustaining peace and security, human rights and the rule of law, in particular, giving a voice to small nations across the world. And we will continue to do that. And Africa has been a constant part of that work. During our last term on the Security Council, for example, a central focus of our efforts was to foster and support the peace process in Angola. More recently, as I mentioned, Ireland in partnership with Kenya helped to broker the agreement of the Sustainable Development Goals. These goals agreed by the entire UN membership are an agenda for a better world by 2030. Each country, including Ireland, is encouraged to make progress against those 17 goals. Ireland's first voluntary national report on what we have achieved so far will be presented to the UN later this month. Above all, though, I think it is through our role in peacekeeping that Ireland's commitment to the United Nations is perhaps most evident. It is certainly the area most visible to the general public. I'm very proud of the unbroken record of service of Irish Defence Force personnel as UN peacekeepers since 1958. 60 years of unbroken service. We are Europe's largest per capita contributor to troops to UN peacekeeping operations. And again, it forms a central part of our history of engagement with Africa over the past half century. Today, Irish peacekeepers are again in the Congo as part of of the Manusco mission and also participate in the mission in Western Sahara and are also in Mali. I had the privilege of meeting our troops there who are working in partnership with the United Kingdom on a training mission. And over the past decades, the Defence Forces have served with distinction as part of the UN missions across the continent in countries and situations as diverse as Namibia, Somalia, Liberia, and of course Chad. Irish missionary doctors helped to fight against Ebola in Sierra Leone. Irish civilians, too, work to build peace, including in the Philippines, the hell and Libya. We must recognise, though, that we are not alone in our support to the UN and our willingness to commit personnel to its work. It is a principle shared by many of our partners across Africa. Indeed, while Ireland lost our first troops as part of the UN peacekeeping force in the Congo, so too did the then newly independent Ghana as part of the same mission. And often I think people forget that and they shouldn't. Ladies and gentlemen, looking to our future relationship with Africa, it is clear that building peace and prosperity will continue to be a central feature of our engagement and will drive what I hope will be an ever deeper set of political relations. We must use all available mechanisms to build those relationships at the UN, through the African Union and regional organisations, and of course through the European Union, as well at a bilateral level. There is nothing like face to face contact, which I feel are always the most productive. Our dialogue will be, should be and indeed must be, based on mutual respect and partnership, on empathy and on an openness to listening and responding to each other's concerns. As Ireland, I hope, has always done. In my view, the current infrastructure, within which to have that engagement, is simply not fit for purpose. And the idea that the extent of the collective leaders meeting between the continents of Europe and Africa is in an EU Africa summit once every four years, with the hope that foreign ministers might get together once a year, is totally inadequate in the context of the collective challenges that we face now. Not just on the migration challenge, which is, in many ways, a symptom of a much, much deeper and more complex challenge that we have to face together.  Not finance, not commerce. The capacity for the kind of depth of engagement politically, in order to put a context around the solutions to the enormity of the challenges that we face and opportunities that we face together, is something that I believe should be to the forefront of the future of Europe debate in terms of our external policy, if not actually the most important part of it. Given the trends and demographics that we know continue to develop in the continent of Africa, where we're likely to see an extra billion people in the next three decades or so. While Ireland plans in the next 20 years to have an extra million people, I think we do have to ask ourselves the question, how are we helping our friends and partners in the continent of Africa, planning for those kind of numbers every year, each year, within their own countries? A reminder of that was really evident to me in Ethiopia, when I asked the question, how many jobs do you need to create in your economy to keep pace with the demographics and population growth, to simply keep unemployment at the level that it's at today? And the answer was 2 million, 2 million jobs a year every year and definitely into the future. This is the extent of the task that many governments on the continent of Africa are thinking about and grappling with, and that is why, in my view, like so many other areas, a lot of the challenges that countries face cannot be solved on their own. And the same goes for Ireland, by the way, in terms of some of the challenges that we face in the future. So these are the conversations that we need to have, the conversations that we will have in Dublin and in many parts of Africa at ministeria level, using our embassies in multilateral forums, conversations which we have in a formal setting, but also as friends over perhaps an Ethiopian coffee or an Irish beer or whiskey. I know which one I prefer. So these conversations will determine the next phase of Ireland's rich relationship with many countries in Africa. And can I just finish on a personal note? And Rory did mention that I'm kind of personally engaged in this project, and I am. I remember when I was growing up, when I was six or seven years of age, my family fostered children at the time. And we fostered a young boy from Nigeria, who was a brother in my household, literally while he was there for a few years. And he, as far as I can remember, was the only black person in Cork at the time. It was in the late 1970s. And when we held hands walking down Patrick Street in the middle of the city, crowds would part in front of us with everybody staring. Because we lived on an island and in a country that was predominantly white and Catholic, and some Protestant too, but still white. We certainly didn't have the kind of cultural diversity that we have today. Now I drop my children to school, and about a third of their class come from other countries, some of them from Africa, Eastern Europe, and other parts of the world. And so we have seen a transformation in Ireland in less than half a lifetime that has been hugely positive. But is developing our capacity to build relationships in my view in a way that takes us to a new chapter from one of aid and charity and support to one of partnership, integration and mutual respect. That respect, I think, has always been there, but perhaps it wasn't as tangible as it is today. So for me, the new Irish aid consultation process is an exciting opportunity for us to try to reflect the modern challenges that we face, but also the modern opportunities that we have through technology, through new media platforms, through technology transfer, through know-how, through partnership, through respect, and through an entirely different form of engagement between two of the world's great continents. And that might sound a bit highbrow, but in my view, if we don't have that level of ambition, we will constantly struggle to deal with the fallout from the absence of the potential of partnerships like that, which is exactly what's happening today in the Mediterranean, which is changing politics for the worst in Europe, through fear, of the unknown, of change, and through a resistance to migration and to multiculturalism, which in my view, in many ways, is a poison in the political system that the European Union is going to struggle to deal with. So there's a lot at stake here, and I think that the relationships that we develop will be hugely important in that context, and that's why I thank so many of you for coming today to listen to my perspectives on them. Thank you very much.