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

I did. It is quite a useful and comprehensive letter that raises a number of issues. The number one issue is value for money. Some €6.3 million of public money was invested in this database and €250,000 was spent on shutting it down. There will also be a cost for the CSO, which we can see. It may be useful to write to the CSO, or the relevant Department, to find out exactly what the nature of the investment would be to allow it to fulfil the EUROSTAT requirements under EU law.

Additional money is now being spent on the Department of Rural and Community Development to scope out the creation of a database that would be more limited than that of Benefacts, but that would be an additional cost. There are serious value for money issues here. The Indecon report indicated a number of issues that have been referred to, including if it was a question of Benefacts being superseded by another entity, there would be a requirement to have some sort of interim arrangement so we do not have a loss of the information that has been captured in that database, which was used by State and individual organisations. Many people used this database. It included audited figures, it was reliable and it was open source.

There has been a lot of misinformation. I was quite shocked by what we were told on that particular day, before the database was closed down. I asked the Secretary General if he had read the Indecon report. He told me he had not but that he had been briefed on it. We probably all have a copy of the Indecon report. It is not a difficult document to read; neither is its executive summary. It well summarises some of the issues. It states that, when it comes to a cost-benefit analysis, the benefits of the database outweigh the costs, which is not what we are being told. It really annoys me that we are not getting accurate information.

I raised this matter in the Dáil yesterday with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, who took Leaders' Questions. It is important we note how Benefacts was set up. According to page 2 of the document before me, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform's conditions for providing funding include that Benefacts was incorporated as a not-for-profit company; it was limited by guarantee without share capital at the Department's behest, which reflected the public benefit purposes for which it was established; and this meant that the company had no beneficial owners in the commercial sense and that, unlike a for-profit enterprise, was unable to make any medium- or long-term plans based on equity or borrowings. In his reply to me yesterday, the Minister said that none of the Departments had an interest in contributing towards the funding of this, but he also said they could have raised money from other sources. There was philanthropy involved in setting Benefacts up but the way the company is structured means it is not open to it to raise money in the way a normal enterprise would. That was at that Department's own behest.

I question why this was shut down. There was a significant volume of publicly available information. Sometimes funding comes from multiple sources. It was very valuable to be able to capture the range of sources of funding. The more limited thing being talked about by the Department of Rural and Community Affairs does not have that broad look. We are fixated on the silo-based approach. Benefacts was the opposite of that. It took an overview. That was incredibly valuable. It is not something that can be captured in value for money terms, but there are aspects of value for money that can be captured.

The thing about the Charities Regulator that was repeatedly referred to during committee meetings is disputed in the correspondence. I would believe what Benefacts is disputing because of the timelines. The relevant legislation dates to 2009 and the Charities Regulator was set up in 2014 around the same time as Benefacts started. Benefacts had proof of concept when this proposal was put. Several things are disputed throughout this document. It is very thoughtful correspondence, but I feel there was a decision to close Benefacts down even before the Indecon report was commissioned. I cannot see why we would want to end up with a less transparent arrangement relating to public funding that will cost more. This is something we should not let go.