Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

We have communicated this to the support groups and they are aware of the position. I hope to be able to send this proposed agreement through the Department of Foreign Affairs to the Vietnamese Government in the next day or two — certainly this week. It will then be up to the Government of Vietnam to decide whether it will sign up to that agreement. There may well be negotiations and difficulties between the two countries. We can anticipate that as these are the difficulties one faces when dealing with sovereign governments. If it were simply the case that sending the agreement represented its ratification, it would be fantastic, but obviously that is not the case.