Mr. John Lawlor:

I will take the question on the world scout movement myself. It is a very important project for us. There is a bit of the John Kennedy thing about it. We are not trying to do it because it is easy, we want to do it because it is hard. If we set ourselves a major target and objective, it had be one in the face of stiff opposition. There was a brilliant performance at the world conference by Ciara Keegan and the young team to win the bid. It is very much about developing our young people on the route to the moot. We have a thing called AcadaMoot which is about certifying our young people in project management skills, logistics and all of those skill necessary to run an event of that scale. It can be very good for scouting in Ireland. It also involves a focus on our older age group, our young adults, which is really important. The committee has seen two wonderful examples of them here today. It could also be very good for the country with 120 nations represented. We would love to bring some of them to the Houses of the Oireachtas to meet Members and perhaps have a youth parliament or United Nations of scouting, which would be wonderful. That would be a great opportunity. That could be very good for the country and do for scouting what the Special Olympics achieved in terms of perception and the impact across the country. That could be quite important.

We have worked with the Minister and her officials to seek support for this. It is a bit like the Olympics. Iceland is hosting the moot this summer, the flag will pass to us in July and our event will take place in 2021. Iceland is a lot smaller than Ireland in terms of population and scouts there had significant support from the Icelandic Government for the event. We seek support from the Government here and are working actively with the Minister and her officials to secure it because it is a big challenge for our organisation. I hope that answers the question.

Deputy Ó Laoghaire raised the issue of the challenge of staff ratios and coverage across the country, which is really important. To give an example, we have one development officer to cover the area from Sligo to Clare. Development officers are the people who work to open new groups. We have set a target of opening between 15 and 20 new groups a year and, perhaps, expanding 90 existing groups to allow more young people to benefit from scouting. We have done that in Lettermullen and Letterfrack in the west recently. However, it demands work from professional staff. We have identified that professional support is particularly required to open groups among communities in disadvantaged areas. As such, we are engaging with the Department now to try to get more development officers so that we can open scouting in those areas, which we think is very important.

Access to premises was also raised. Approximately 50% of our groups have their own property or exclusive access to a property, which is a very important thing for a scouting group. One cannot imagine a GAA club operating without its own premises and it is similarly the case for a scout group. It is a big challenge given our programme. It is approximately 50%.

I will ask Mr. O'Connor to deal with supports for changes to the charities legislation. He has been actively involved in ensuring compliance with charities and company law changes.