Mr. John Farrelly:

Not necessarily. It depends on the charitable purpose. In a service-driven charity one would expect that to be the case. This is where we need to bring in the reporting regulations. There is a statement of recommended practice, SORP, for transparency in the UK and in Northern Ireland. The public should be able to look and form its own view because members of the public might say they do not want to support one type of charity but they do want to support another. However, they need the data and information. I do not automatically buy into the idea that because someone is paid there is a problem. Some charitable purposes need very specialist activity. That said, we would look at how much a charity earns, how much is spent on particular salaries and if that is value for money. We also would ask the trustees whether they believe that is a reasonable use of the money given to them as a gift by benefactors. We will push away and see what people come up with. Overall a red light would not come on just yet about the ratios that people use, but that may change.