Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I have to say I get angry when I think of this because it is a complete waste of public money. We had a system that was working well and was being well used. What is coming back from the CSO is explicit about the benefit. The CSO is also saying that Benefacts data addressed many of the coverage issues that the CSO had in respect of the not-for-profit sector. Essentially, it had positive outcomes from EUROSTAT audits. How are we going to provide EUROSTAT with the same level of information? It was satisfied with the information that was being provided. We could see how it compared.

For example, one could have funding streams going to one particular organisation from multiple sources. That kind of oversight was easily found. It was a heavily used database. Once it is closed down, just repopulating it or backfilling it would be very hard to set up again. It does appear, however, that now there is the potential for complete duplication. Another Department now wants to set up something similar but less comprehensive. The Indecon report commissioned in 2017 highlighted that the benefit outweighed the cost. The first few pages of the Indecon report tells us that. It said that if it was to be decommissioned there would need to be a transition arrangement to make sure that there was not a gap. All of this was very black and white.