Mr. John Farrelly:

We do not have the gift in terms of charitable status. That is a Revenue issue. All the relevant entities were registered by Revenue and given charitable tax exemption. There are several schemes. One is for gifts but there are different schemes. This area is not as transparent for the public as I would like it to be. I am keen for things to be transparent. People should be able to understand it. One should not need to be a solicitor or an accountant to understand what is going on in a charity. These are the things we will be pushing. Since 16 May we have registered 43 charities through the lens of the Charities Act.

We have an agreement with Revenue that we are going through certain procedures such that it could trust us that these entities fit its criteria. I am not totally satisfied with that. We are renegotiating the memorandum of understanding with Revenue because I want to push charity to the fore. It is not fair for a small local charity where the 70 year olds are feeding the 90 year olds and which does not want a charitable tax exemption. We need to work that out. We would like transparency on the tax law because it looks as if over time that is an important component of being a charity in many ways, bigger than the little gifts.