Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We have an ongoing discussion with Departments about this. Within my Department we have officials who are responsible for the Vote. They deal with their colleagues in the other Departments on a daily basis. I will mention another initiative which it would be worthwhile for the committee to look at in the coming months. We have funded a new initiative as part of the open Government partnership calledbenefacts.ie. We have co-funded this with Atlantic Philanthropies. It is a single database in which every citizen will be able to see the funding stream that any charity organisation receives from the taxpayer. It is something I encountered when I was working with the Chairman on the Committee of Public Accounts. If one is dealing with an organisation in receipt of taxpayer funding, sometimes it receives multiple streams of funding and it can be very difficult to identify the total amount received. We have co-funded a website that now means any citizen can go in and find out what any charity organisation gets from the taxpayer and from whom they get it. We launched the initiative a number of weeks ago. I hope over the coming years it will play a really big part in enabling people to better understand where their money goes.