Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Mr. Farrelly on his appointment and wish him well. We should all recognise the tremendous role undertaken by charities and the tremendous work they have done over the years. The principle of involving the public in a semi-statutory way has yielded huge results. It is equally important that the charities are operated above board and that the Charities Act is enforced. If it is not, as other speakers said, the danger is that public confidence in the system will be undermined, and it will not be possible to recover from a series of situations where questions were raised and left unanswered.

I have raised the number of charities that are registered so far on a number of occasions over the past number of years, particularly on the Order of Business. I saw a situation developing that I was not happy with. I cross checked this, and the means to cross check are not very readily available to a public representative or a member of the public. We all know there is a necessity to ensure that if somebody is raising money ostensibly for a charity, it must go to that charity. Otherwise, we have problems. I found that it was quite easy to run some of the charities, but some that I thought were registered were not registered at all. I worry about that.

Another issue, which Mr. Farrelly mentioned, is dormant charities that have fallen by the wayside. Do they have money in accounts? Are they dormant accounts? Did the funds fall to the Exchequer as dormant accounts or what happened to the money? Usually, there is a balance left somewhere. It might or might not be large but it is still money that was raised for a particular purpose.

Might it be preferable to speed up the process of registration and make it quite clear that failure to register is not acceptable and cannot be acceptable in the long or short term? It has the potential to damage all charities.

On the making of the regulations, I also raised a question about that previously. It is imperative that the regulations are made as quickly as possible and that they are broadly based, in order to protect legitimate charities, the public purse and the integrity of the charitable sector. If we delay unnecessarily, and I accept that this is a job for the Minister, it will cause questions and doubts to be raised about what is happening and what should be happening. We must be extremely careful about that.

My last point relates to the total number of charities. It is very hard to control all of them to the extent that is desirable.

We have to control them to the greatest extent possible. There is a huge number of them and it is very difficult to control their modus operandi because they straddle the voluntary and statutory sectors. In between those two areas, there is considerable room for manoeuvre and administrative difficulties. I strongly support the Charities Regulatory Authority and the work it is doing. The only rider I would apply is that there is a job to be done and it must be done for the benefit of all charities.