Mr. John Farrelly:

With regard to the prosecutable offence, I shall to defer to my colleague Ms Cahill. However, we have to have our review clearly formed. There are well-intentioned but uninformed people out there. Then there are badly intentioned and well-informed people out there. We have to be able to zone in at a very human level and be able to assess that type of risk. We have written to the Garda Commissioner looking to set up an agreement. Gardaí in general, in their communities, are very watchful and vigilant and understand the law well. They can collect evidence and can prosecute certain arrestable offences potentially in the Charities Act. We are very interested in what that line is but, generally, if we write to someone, very often people will come back to us and we can tell straight away that they had no clue at all that they had crossed the line. There are other people, including those who are going for registration, and there can be issues around private benefit and how the charity is set up. When we give them what we believe are quite reasonable facts, their response may not make sense even though they can be very well informed. It is about forming views on this.

One of the differences about charities regulation is that we should not be afraid to contest a certain space in the law, even if we are to lose, and put it out there in terms of transparency. We are doing a number of things. We are conducting some reviews at the moment which will put something out, transparently, into that space. We may lose but that is okay.