LAST summer, Mr James Dillon, chairman of the voluntary organisation Health Action Overseas, visited the orphanage in China which had become notorious for its treatment of children through a Channel 4 documentary, Return to the Dying Rooms.
He came away convinced that the Chinese authorities were not operating a deliberately cruel system and would in fact welcome outside help and expertise in coping with the problem of orphaned and handicapped children.
After a second visit to China last week, Mr Dillon and Mr Gerard Byrne, executive director of HAO, have reached agreement with officials to provide direct aid, in the form of equipment and personnel, to children in need in one of China's poorest provinces.
Speaking in Beijing yesterday, Mr Dillon said the breakthrough meant that for the first time "people can financially support Irish projects which directly affect the lives of these children".
The scale of the poverty they saw during a visit to the southern province of Guizhou was "unimaginable" he said, even compared with poverty in Romania. Health Action Overseas was founded seven years ago to help orphans in Romania and currently has 26 Irish and 35 Romanian personnel there.
HAO will send a small number of teachers to train staff at schools for deal, blind, mentally handicapped and orphaned children in Guiyang, capital of Guizhou. The province has a population of 25 million, a quarter of whom live below the poverty line. Mr Dillon and Mr Byrne visited schools in Guiyang and the provincial training school in the town of Anshun, where Irish specialists will be based.
Negotiations leading to the project being set up were helped by contacts made by the Chinese Ambassador in Dublin, Ms Fan, Mr Dillon said. A further project in Nanjing is under negotiation.
Mr Dillon estimated the cost of equipment at £325,000 and personnel at £310,000. He hoped to have one teacher in place by the end of the year to train Chinese teachers in areas of special needs. The organisation relies on voluntary donations and agencies for funding and on the Agency for Personnel Serving Overseas (APSO) of the Department of Foreign Affairs to provide salaries for volunteers.
Mr Dillon said the Channel 4 Documentary, which caused national outrage at the reported treatment of orphans in China, did not reflect what was happening in the Shanghai orphanage where there had been "three years of solid work" to improve conditions.