 Then in April 2010 an agreement was announced whereby another €348m would be paid.This followed negotiations in late 2009 with 18 church groups, though it seems that the letters of offer were accepted as such by government, without proof of any effort to increase the amounts offered.The 2010 announcement also confirmed for the first time that the entire process since 1999 had led to ".. costs of well over a billion euro being incurred by the State".