Mr. Patrick O'Connor:

Go raibh míle maith agaibh as ucht cuireadh a thabhairt dhom teacht ós bhur gcomhar inniú. Is mór an onóir dhom a bheith anseo í bhur measc agus tá súil agam go mbeidh sibh sásta liom mar chathaoirleach ar an mBinse Achomhairc do Charthanais. I am deeply honoured to have been nominated by the Minister for Justice and Equality as chairman designate of the Charity Appeals Tribunal and to be here before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice and Equality. My appointment as a member of the Charity Appeals Tribunal, together with the other members thereof - Ms Carol Fawsitt, Mr. Bill Holohan, Ms Karen Smyth and Ms Deirdre Kiely - took effect from 1 October this year. I am grateful for the opportunity given to me to be a member of the Charity Appeals Tribunal and look forward to the opportunities and challenges that will arise from it.

The Charities Appeal Tribunal derives its statutory basis from Part 5 of the Charities Act 2009, sections 75 to 80. I am a solicitor with 42 years experience in practice. My professional involvement continues in the firm of P. O'Connor and Son, which was established in 1900. I am currently its managing partner and there are 25 staff members of considerable skill and experience. I continue to be active in legal practice, particularly in the areas of dispute resolution, including litigation, arbitration, mediation and negotiations, and in the provision of legal services to clients in estate, wills, wards of court, protection and assisted decision-making. For the benefit of the committee, I set out my involvement in areas of legal practice, policy level involvements, business and sport.

I developed a family legal practice, steeped in tradition, to become a leading law firm in Connacht that is well regarded nationally, I hope. I have extensive experience of advocating for clients in the District, Circuit and High Courts. I have addressed all Irish courts, including the Supreme Court, on legal matters. I have been practising arbitration since 1983 with extensive experience in commercial, property, insurance and other contentious matters. I am a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and I have acted as a mediator in commercial, property and other disputes since 2000. I was appointed a notary public in 1977 and have served in four west of Ireland counties. I have acted as coroner in Mayo since 1989 and I regularly conduct inquests. I have been a council member of the Coroners Society of Ireland since 2006 and a member of the Garda Síochána disciplinary inquiry and appeal board since 2007. I have been a member of independent appeals tribunal of Irish Prison Service since 2011 and I am currently serving as chairman of the Mental Health Tribunal, conducting more than 360 mental health hearings since appointment in 2011. I have been a member of the Charity Appeals Tribunal from 2016, as the committee is aware.

On policy level involvements, I have provided leadership within the legal profession for 35 years, serving as president of Law Society of Ireland and chairman of a number of its committees. I was president of Mayo solicitors' bar association and I have held other officer roles over the past four decades. I served on the judicial appointments advisory board from 1999 to 2002 and the Court Services board in the same years. I served on the appeals board of the Society of Actuaries disciplinary tribunal from 1999 to 2009 and the rules of the superior courts committee from 2002 to 2012. I was chairman of a preliminary investigation committee of the Irish Auditing and Accounting Supervisory Authority and I have been a member of its external panel since 2009. I developed sports law and sports management expertise through roles such as director with Sport Ireland, national child welfare officer with the Irish Rugby Football Union and judicial officer for rugby competitions.

In business I was appointed to the Press Council of Ireland and served as a board member for two terms, totalling six years, and I served as council vice chairman in 2014. I have been a director of the O'Dwyer Foundation, a not-for-profit charity, since 1990. I have been a director and trustee of the Brabazon Park Trust since 1978. I was a former director of Hope House, an addiction treatment centre established in 1995 from 1995 to 2002; DANA Exploration from 1991 to 1995; and IRD Kiltimagh Limited from 1991 to 2002. I have been chairman of the National Sports Campus Development Committee from 2015 to date. I was a director of the Irish Association of Suicidology from 1997 to 2002. In other areas, I was a former chairman of the board of management of St. Louis Community School for 13 years and the board of management of University Hall SJ for seven years. I am a former member of the Sports Council of Ireland.

In the sport area, I am currently a director of Sport Ireland and have been a member of Connacht Rugby professional game board since 2011 and chairman in 2014. I was a member and chairman of the IRFU child welfare committee from 2007 to 2015 and have been a board member of the IRFU charitable trust since 2011. I have been a member of disciplinary panels for World Rugby, European Rugby and the Six Nations since 2006. I am judicial officer on those panels for rugby competitions. I currently honorary legal adviser to a number of sailing, golf, rugby, fishing and other sporting bodies.

The committee will observe that I have and had a number of interests in the voluntary and charitable sector, particularly with the O'Dwyer Cheshire Home, Hope House addiction centre, the Irish Association of Suicidology and schools. I have served on the board of management on a number of schools, both national and secondary, and I continue to act as a legal adviser to a number of charities, sporting and philanthropic organisations. The establishment of the charities regulatory authority and now the Charity Appeals Tribunal are an important development in the oversight, transparency and accountability of charities in Ireland. The Charity Appeals Tribunal is an important addition to the regulatory architecture applying to the charities sector in that it provides the right of appeal by a person whose application to the authority has been refused or in the case of an existing charity whose registration has been revoked. I will not delay the committee in reciting the provisions of Part 5 of the Act save to say that it will be necessary for the tribunal to put in place rules for the hearing of applications, an appeal form and other related matters. Work is already under way in the preparation of the necessary rules and procedures. It is important to ensure that the appeal process will be fair, transparent and relatively simple and does not become cumbersome. I envisage that most appeals will be made by individuals.

Charities are a very important part of Irish Society. People in Ireland are extremely generous and deserve assurances that the sector will conduct its business in an honest and professional manner. Charities should be open and transparent in their activities, particularly with regard to their financial affairs, so that public confidence in them will be maintained and strengthened. The meitheal and community involvement for people less fortunate than oneself is ingrained in Irish people and society. We are a generous nation.

The charity sector is involved in the collection and distribution of billions of euro each year and has an involvement with tens of thousands of people who are in need of support. This is a vital addition to, and often a substitution for, State provision of materials and services. The charity sector in Ireland is in a good place notwithstanding some high-profile difficulties and concerns over the past few years. The introduction of the authority and regulator will give added confidence to Irish people in their ongoing continued support of this vital and important sector in Irish society.

Ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil libh as ucht bhur gcuid ama a chaitheamh ag éisteacht liom inniú agus beidh mé ag súil go mór le bhur moladh. Many thanks for giving the committee's valuable time to listen to me. If members have any questions, I will be happy to endeavour to answer them.