Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I raised the issue in the context of seeking to understand how each of the line Departments operates its relationship with An Taisce. I thank the committee for holding this item over until this week. I wanted to get a deeper understanding of how the service level agreements operate between nine Departments that are funders through the education silo of An Taisce. When I looked at the 2019 accounts and the various circulars relating to the operation of the relationship between the line Departments and An Taisce, the correspondence coming back to us reflected a concern in respect of seeking clarification regarding the 2019 accounts. An Taisce's 2019 financial statements stated that a change in An Taisce policy will result in a stipulation for a small allowance for organisational costs and innovation in all funding agreements going forward. That set off an alarm bell in my mind because I was not sure whether some of the funding that is specifically for programmes that are well notified to us, such as the Green Flag, Investigate Forests, Clean Coasts and the Blue Flag, was being brought out of the educational silo of An Taisce, which delivers many of the programmes, and into the main An Taisce body. That was the concern I had and I wanted to seek clarification.

Based on the correspondence we received back, it seems there are very specific engagements between the funders and An Taisce in respect of buttressing or strengthening service level agreements or reviewing current service level agreements or contracts in respect of that funding. That provides one with a degree of confidence. In the case of one Department, which I think was the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, the Department clarified this was not compatible with public financial procedures, stating the grant moneys must be spent entirely on the programmes the Department has agreed to fund within the specific conditions of those grants and that failure to adhere to these conditions could result in funding being withdrawn and possibly the recoupment of unapproved expenditure sought or other legal enforcement.

The impression I had was that, quite literally, An Taisce was taking a bit of a tranche of some of that funding-----