Umlaut, accents in Ireland (documentation)

Wooha

Just wondering how "foreign" special characters are handled within Ireland for official documentation, e.g. passport, birth cert, ESB accounts, etc...

I'm talking if your name or surname contains any of these:

ä, é, ö, à, ü, ø, etc...

so for instance if your surname was "Bäcker", how is the ä handled?

Do you:
a) Baecker
b) Backer
c) Bäcker

Ideally of course option c is the correct one, as that is your correct surname, but for instance if you have to ring the ESB to set up an account, will they know what you mean? How do you explain the ä on the phone?
Is there some sort of rule?

HalloweenJack

From the Germans I know, when they translate their name into English, the umlaut becomes an extra 'e', so Kröger becomes Kroeger, for example.

I've seen Spaniards with names containing 'ñ' simply using 'n' in its place.

jrmb

Sometimes "ñ" has to become "ni" to prevent unfortunate second meanings, such as "año" (year) becoming "ano" (anus).