Ms Deirdre Mortell:

It has been an excellent debate. I wish to refer also to Senator Zappone's question about the interaction between State and philanthropic funding. It is very important, but we have under-utilised that tool both ways.

State funders have under-utilised the tool in terms of bringing and inviting philanthropies to come to the table and co-fund services or other initiatives and philanthropy has underutilised the tool in terms of bringing the State to the table. It is something we could all do much more.

Speaking from my experience, One Foundation is ten years old and typically agreed three-year contracts with our grantees. The final three-year contracts, which generally were negotiated between 2008 and 2010, focus very explicitly on what we call leverage. We know in advance the spending will end because we will close, so we focused on how to bring other funders to the table at an earlier stage to make the transition easier. I spoke about BeLonG To, and its final year's money of €150,000 was conditional on it matching the amount through fund-raising. I am thrilled to state it hit the fund-raising target in December 2012 and we have released another €150,000 for the organisation for this year. This is an example where the State had already stepped up. BeLonG To needed to build its fund-raising skills and capacity, and needed to start practising early and not wait until we were gone and putting the incentive in place worked. State funders could speak to philanthropists and there could be much more dialogue at all levels. As actors we are very siloed and we could have much more reaching across the divide. At present it is not built into the structures in any way.

The social innovation fund is intended to be 50:50 funding between the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and private philanthropy money to be raised. The initial funding committed from the Department is €5 million. This needed to be matched by €5 million from philanthropy. This is now built into the next stage, assuming it gets off the ground.

My recommendations to the committee are to support the social innovation fund, ask questions, drive it forward and put pressure on the Minister, Deputy Hogan, to deliver. I am sure he will, but the more support he feels he gets, particularly cross-party support, will help. We have spoken about growth capital and committee members have heard how important it is. Everyone here is agreed. Mr. Seán Coughlan mentioned the recommendations from the social enterprise and social entrepreneurship task force. These are small things which are very easy to do but they need to happen. They work across Departments which always makes it harder to deliver. I encourage all committee members to take an interest. The committee should back Change Nation.

We can export these initiatives. We do not have to just import them. We can bring in fantastic international initiatives, but we have global world-class social innovations in this country which are not being exported at the scale they should be because they struggle to get off the ground in the first place. Foróige, in our portfolio, was recognised by UNESCO this year. Its leadership programme for young people is officially world-class. BeLonG To has been recognised as world-class and it is only ten years old. It spoke at a UNESCO conference this year and was presented as official best practice. We have many others, including the people here. We can hold our heads high but we need to get behind them and help push them out. We can be very proud but there is more we can do.