Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Broadly speaking, there will be three categories of threshold. At present every registered charity has to submit an online annual report form. When its income or expenditure goes over €10,000, there is a higher requirement. We propose to raise that threshold to €25,000 because research has shown that the organisations under the €25,000 income line are largely volunteer-run. Deputy Ó Cathasaigh himself said it: we want to keep people on board so we want to keep people volunteering and getting involved at that level. The next level is from €25,000 to €250,000. The level of reporting required there will be higher up the scale again. At the top level, the threshold for which is going up as well, from €100,000 to €250,000, there are 1,000-plus charities. We have probably heard of the majority of them. Their requirements will go up as a result of this, but we have large support for that. They will be required to submit detailed accounts under the statement of recommended practice, SORP, headings. A lot of these larger charities are already doing that work anyway in respect of other reporting bodies they need to go to.

There was an issue with third level foundations, a simple lack of transparency and their not being required to submit accounts to the Charities Regulator. That is removed, so, because of the size of a lot of those charities, I guess they will end up in the top tier of €250,000-plus. We will get quite a bit of detail on their financial operations once this is processed, agreed and finalised, as is hoped.