Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

My final question relates to the future health of the voluntary organisations. I have done work with non-governmental organisations in Ireland, America and the United Kingdom. One of the differences I see here is that many voluntary organisations are very small. Ten or 15 years ago a big effort was made in London to consolidate and reach scale. It was a painful process, but it led to better outcomes for service users because it created an ability to have economies of scale, bring in more expertise and do a bunch of things that really small organisations find it difficult to do. Is that something the voluntary sector would consider to be okay? Does it think there is a good opportunity to consolidate to try to create a smaller number of bigger organisations? I would also like to ask about the pension funding issue in that context. Deputy O'Reilly has spoken about the deficit. The funding of pensions can destroy the wealthiest of organisations. Am I right in thinking the State is now saying it may fund some of the voluntary organisations' capital, wage and associated costs but that they will have to find the money to fund the future pension contributions of their staff? I understand the voluntary organisations will have to raise the money to fund the 5%, 10% or 15% that will have to be put into staff pension funds each year.