Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

-----and allocating it to An Taisce, which I understand is essentially a membership organisation. When we look at the delivery of the programmes I referenced, we can see they are excellent programmes and we are very lucky to have an organisation like An Taisce to deliver them. I just wanted to seek clarity on that. Based on the correspondence, it seems individual line Departments are taking a rigorous approach to interrogating that relationship and the 2019 accounts.

I am not a financial or management accountant. If An Taisce is a membership organisation, from a public purse and financial probity point of view, do each of those line Departments, the State, the Government or, ultimately, the taxpayer have a right to look at the financial strength or otherwise of the parent organisation when they are funding that organisation?

In other words, does the parent organisation have to be in a solvent position before it can receive funds? That is just a curiosity of mine. The reason I am curious about that is because if, on An Taisce's previous year's financial accounts, auditors were saying that - and I am quoting from its financial accounts - for organisational costs and innovation and all funding agreements, that an allowance would be made and there would be a movement of some of the moneys then, one wonders, why that is the case if An Taisce is a financially robust organisation. Hopefully, that can be clarified for me. It may not be within the remit of this committee to have that clarified. Again, I seek the Chair's wisdom on that.

It serves a vital function in terms of the delivery of its excellent programmes, and it permeates out with citizens proactively involved in delivering those programmes. It has built a consciousness and awareness and set of programmes that have had a massive impact in communities at the most local level. It is important that we preserve that and protect it in every way that we can. It does a vital piece of work. However, at the same time, I imagine that we should satisfy ourselves that everything that is being done is absolutely with financial probity in mind.