I thank members for their attendance. In July 1984, I married my wife Eithne. In May 1985, we had twins, Seán and Ciara. The following July, we had another set of twins, Kevin and Brendan. Ten months later, Eamonn was born. A year later, Conor was born. We then had a daughter, Meave. In essence, we had seven children under the age of five, which gave us a certain notoriety in our home town of Newry.
On 15 June 2013, I celebrated my 60th birthday. I got up the following morning, Sunday, 16 June, to prepare for my family, including my mother and my sisters, Eithne's mother, father and sisters and others who were coming to the house to celebrate my 60th birthday. At approximately 10.45 a.m. I went to the back garden with two of my sons to erect a gazebo. At approximately 11.45 a.m. I was called into the front room of the house where Vinny and Caroline Toner were waiting for me with my wife Eithne. I was told to sit down and we were given the news that Kevin had been killed in a hit-and-run in New York during the night. We were lucky, I suppose, in that we did not get a cold call from America. Kevin had gone out there to his friend, who is Vinny and Caroline's son. When he heard the news that Kevin had been killed he contacted his mother and told her to break the news to us.
We are a well known family in the town. My father taught in the Christian Brothers school for 43 years and my mother was a teacher in the Sacred Heart school. I also taught in a school in the town for 40 years. Eithne was involved in drama circles and the children we all very well known. When the news broke in Newry that Kevin had been killed the whole town went into a frenzy of fund-raising. It was amazing. At a pub quiz on the Tuesday night, £42,000 was raised. On the Thursday night, there was a fun run and walk, from which £20,000 was raised. Kevin had been in Australia and a fund-raising event was held there. There were also fund-raising events in New York. Essentially, Kevin's employers paid for his body to be brought home and so we were left with the massive sum of £150,000 that had been fund-raised in less than a fortnight to bring Kevin's body home.
About a fortnight after Kevin's death, a young man from Carryduff was killed in Thailand. We contacted the family and offered to pay to have their son's body brought home and that is how the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust came about. We decided to use the money we had been given to help other families visited with the same tragedy as us. This was going to be Kevin's legacy and so we wanted to do it right and set about applying for charitable status. We are from County Down and as such our application was made to the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland. In January 2015, almost 18 months after we had applied, we got charitable status. Members will be aware that to be a charity, one has to prove need. The reason our application took so long was because the commission wanted us to means-test people while in the depths of despair and we were unwilling to agree to that. We were eventually given charitable status on a "relief of stress" basis. In other words, when a family contacts us we relieve them of the stress of arranging the repatriation of their loved one and we also pay for it.
It is just over three years since Kevin was killed. Since then, we have brought home more than 212 bodies. Members may recall that in November last eight young people died in Perth in Australia in the space of two weeks. All of those killed were young people and the deaths were totally unrelated, including two young lads from Omagh and Coleraine who were killed when a slab fell on them, a suicide, a young man killed in a car crash and another young man following a fall from scaffolding. Not only do we pay for the repatriation, we will arrange it. We take the process out of the hands of those who contact us.
I refer members to the growth of the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust. In the first year, starting from 16 June 2013 when Kevin was killed to 16 June 2014, the trust repatriated the bodies of 26 people. In the early days, not many people were aware of the trust or what it did and so we were reaching out to people at that stage. The trust operates on a Thirty-two County basis. When we hear about the death abroad of a person, we make contact with the parish priest, GAA club and so on in the area where the family lives. In the first year, we repatriated 26 bodies. In the second year, we repatriated 42 bodies. The trust was a little better known at that stage but we were still reaching out. In June 2015, we had a meeting with the then Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Deenihan. Previous to that we had a meeting with officials of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Despite our having repatriated 70 bodies at that stage, we had not had contact from the Department.
We were awarded the GAA President's Medal and decided we would introduce ourselves to the Department. We eventually got a meeting with the former Minister of State, Jimmy Deenihan, and as a result, every Irish consulate and embassy in the world was given our number. Since that meeting, the numbers using our help have really risen. A family may contact the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department will then give the family our number. When the family contacts us, that is when we do our business.
There have been repatriations from quite a lot of countries, including many young people from Australia and America. Originally, our aim, essentially, was to help young people but that is not the way it works. We will help everybody and anybody who needs our help. We draw a line at somebody who has lived in America for 70 years and whose dying wish was to be buried in Ireland as that is not what we do. Over the summer we took home an 87-year-old woman from Bulgaria who died while on holiday. We brought home a baby from Madrid who was stillborn seven months into the mother's pregnancy. We will help anybody who needs our help and the committee can see how we have helped with repatriations from many countries. The numbers going to Dublin or Belfast are quite big because they are cities.
We work on a 32-county basis. We have taken people home to the Falls Road and to the Shankill Road and do not discriminate. If people need our help, we will help them in any way we can. Costs vary, even within the same country. As a result of the expertise we have gained and because Australia has operations like the Claddagh Association in Perth and Irish welfare associations, whenever somebody dies in Australia, we are contacted. As the numbers are so great, we will have used certain undertakers previously who know us and the operation will run quite smoothly. It is the same for America. If somebody dies in the Far East or any country where there is a language difficulty, I will use the services of a professional repatriation company. We use a firm called Albin's in London and because of the amount of business we give it, unfortunately, the firm is very quick to go about its business in getting a body home as soon as possible when we contact it.
With respect to governance, I understand that lately, some charities have muddied the water for others. We are very much a family-run charity and none of us gets paid. None of us expects to be paid or wants it. Everything we did was from the kitchen table, with filing cabinets in the bedroom; the house was taken over by it so on 5 September, we moved to an office and employed an administrator. That is our only expense. Our trustees include chartered accountants, a credit union manager and Kevin's friends. They are all professional people. The governance is very tight. We meet monthly and everybody is well aware of where the money is going.
I was invited to speak to Deputies by Deputy Micheál Martin after providing help with a case in Cork. People are very much aware of us and are behind our work. We are family-run and nobody gets paid. I explain what I would like from the Government whenever I met Deputies. We have a family ethos so I would like every cent given to the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust to go to what it was meant for. If a person gives a euro or a pound, 100 cent or 100 pence should go to that. I am not seeking funding or donations but rather something to cover the cost of the office and our part-time staff. I have quoted a figure of €30,000 per year. In the first year that would go to kitting out the office, as well as paying its running expenses and those of the part-time staff. The same €30,000 next year would get me either a second part-time staff member or one full-time staff member. The service we give to the Department is good and I am not asking too much. I thank the committee for its attention.