Mr. Kiernan Gildea:

Arc Adoption Limited is one of 14 bodies accredited in Ireland. There is provision under the Act to delegate certain responsibilities to it. It is a delegation of Hague functions, which is provided for under the Hague Convention. It deals primarily with the transmission of packs abroad, the handling of a referral into Ireland of a child and the handling of the acceptance of that referral to the country of origin, and also assists couples with logistics, such as accommodation, travel, drivers, translation, court dates, the court itself, passports and so forth. It is accredited to carry out those functions under the Hague Convention. There is a charge for that and those fees must be and have been approved by the authority.

We are in negotiations with Arc Adoption Limited, in particular, as it currently has a number of applications for fees to be struck, particularly for the United States, as well as a new fee structure for Bulgaria and a fee structure for Haiti. We are examining those but, as I said, the major problem is that Arc Adoption does not know what funding, if any, it will get from the State, with reference to the bill one pays.