I propose to take Questions Nos. 116 and 118 together.
A key characteristic of the intercountry adoption service is its demand-led nature. The inability of service providers to respond to the enormous increase in demand was one of the reasons which led to the review of the intercountry adoption assessment service in the report "Towards a Standardised Framework for Intercountry Adoption Assessment Procedures". While patterns are undoubtedly linked to the decreasing availability of Irish children for domestic adoption, this alone does not explain the growth in interest in intercountry adoption of recent years. There is no doubt but that this service was considerably under-resourced in the past. However, the level of unpredictability experienced in recent years is bound to affect the ability of the individual boards to make rapid responses to such increases. For example, between 1998 and 1999 four of the boards saw an increase in applications, some almost a two-fold increase, the other four saw a decrease in numbers applying. Preliminary indications are that applications in 2000 may well exceed applications in 1999 in some of the boards.
The Deputy will be aware of the additional funding £1 million already allocated, £500,000 in both 1999 and 2000, following the publication of the report on intercountry adoption assessment procedures in 1999. This funding was allocated on the basis of waiting lists in December 1998 and September 1999 respectively. In other words, those boards with the largest number of people on their waiting lists received the bulk of the funding. The largest beneficiaries of the additional funding were the Eastern Regional Health Authority, formerly the Eastern Health Board, and the Southern Health Board.