Dr. Deirdre Garvey:

I thank Senator Murphy for the positive, affirming and reaffirming statements he made. As the founding CEO of The Wheel, 21 years ago, the quote from President Michael D. Higgins is very dear to my heart and I passionately believe it to be true. As Mr. Cooper said, we are very excited at the concept of ongoing, structured social dialogue because the world will never be the same, vaccine or no vaccine. We have all seen things in the past year and a bit that will change us and have changed us forever. We are very excited to put our shoulders to the wheel, excuse the pun, to make life and communities better into the future. I thank the Senator for that.

I am very happy to tell the Senator about the funding of The Wheel. It is an open book. Our annual report is more than 40 pages long and everything is put into the open as good practice would dictate. Membership of The Wheel is open to organisations which become members of the company and can vote for the board of directors. That is how that works. They can vote to change the rules as they would in any normal company.

For organisations that are on the smaller side of things, we were delighted on our 20th anniversary last year to be able to fund all those organisations, like Community Gardens Ireland, that are volunteer only or have money flowing through them for specific, small costs up to the level of €25,000. While that figure is not small and is actually quite significant, all of those organisations have free membership, which we are really pleased about. We hope to increase the €25,000 to a higher level of turnover and so capture an enormous number of organisations that way.

We also have a membership category for individuals and organisations that are not non-profit. Full member organisations of The Wheel are the only ones allowed to vote in the AGM or in board of directors' elections. The other two categories of members get all the same benefits in terms of services, belonging, information and training, but they cannot be part of the organisational governance. It is not necessary to be a registered charity to be part of our organisational governance, although more than 80% of our members are. The organisation, however, has to be independent of the State and of any private controlling interests, and it has to be constituted as a not-for-profit so nobody can extract a dividend, sell a share or anything like that. Those are the only two requirements, that the organisation is set up for the public benefit as a not-for-profit and is independent. We welcome everybody with no holds barred, and any organisation whether it is a charity or not. Our membership is growing and thriving.

We do not get any funding from the Department of Health. We have not traditionally been in that funding relationship. As Mr. Cooper said, we now have a very vibrant engagement as regards the relationship between voluntary service providers and the State. That is the current situation and we are doing a lot of work on that.

Where does our funding come from? I like to call our funding model a three-legged stool. One leg is the membership fees. We run 300 training programmes for 6,000 people every year. The vast majority of them are delivered free for members and there is no charge, but we apply a charge for about 35% to 40% of our training courses. That is what we call earned income. We are like an enterprise in the sense that we sell training and a number of other services like that. That is leg number one, which is money we generate from within charities and community and voluntary organisations. The services we provide are very low cost or free but are high volume, which is what makes that work.

The second leg, let us call it core funding, comes from our lead Department, which is the Department of Rural and Community Development. We are beneficiaries of the multiannual funding scheme to support national organisations Mr. Cooper mentioned, administered by Pobal from the Department of Rural and Community Development. We are one of about 70 organisations that benefit from core funding under that scheme. The social dialogue we have been party to and we have mentioned has enabled us to participate in those core functions of representation and support. That is very valuable. That is leg number two.

Leg number three is our largest source of funding but is split into two half legs, if I can put it like that. One is the contracts we have with different Departments. For example, the Department of Foreign Affairs has recently asked us to run a contact and information service, secured through eTenders and public procurement processes, to help Irish organisations access EU money post Brexit. Building those connections of culture and meaning that will also result in funding is very important to the Government. This is a typical contract for service where our staff service that function, are employed as a result of that money, and when that contract ends, which we hope it will not because we are already hitting our targets, the funding will continue.

The second half of the third leg is a relatively small number of corporate partnerships in terms of grants for specific training programmes. We have a great one with Medtronic, a foundation and corporation in Ireland which funds our awareness raising and our charity impact awards programme every year. That is a really valuable corporate partnership.

I hope I have not gone into too much detail but have given a flavour of our three-legged stool funding model. Each one of those legs supports the other. Saying that one leg of funding could be taken away and we would still have 80% of our funding is not how it works. It is a virtuous circle, as it is for all charities. They have a diverse mix of income streams and each one enables the other to happen. If one stream is taken out, the income is not simply reduced by 10%, which is what we are seeing in reduced fundraising income because of the impact of the Covid pandemic. I wanted to make that analogy. I thank the committee and I hope that gives it all the information it needs.