Professor Jane Grimson:

Reference was made to potential for a lack of trust between public bodies. One of the issues we highlighted in our report was that the vast majority of these voluntary organisations have to report to the Companies Office, the Charities Regulatory Authority, HIQA, the HSE and probably many other bodies besides. In many cases those organisations are reporting the same information multiple times over, probably on a slightly different form. There needs to be much more co-operation. It is good to see that the Charities Regulatory Authority is looking at the Australian charities passport idea. That would be very good. This is a cost issue because there is an expense involved in the State and State bodies requesting the information and processing it when it is received. It is, however, also a cost on the voluntary sector.