Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We will ask those two questions. We will note and publish the item of correspondence.

No. 1353 B is from Mr. David Moloney, Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, dated 11 July, providing information requested by the committee arising from a meeting with representatives of the Department on 19 May 2022. Information across a range of areas is included. Also included is a review of the business case for the Department’s funding of Benefacts. I suggest we deal with this item in conjunction with further correspondence we have received from Benefacts itself, which is R1346 C. These two items then are No. 1353 B and R1346 C. I will introduce this correspondence before opening it to the floor.

At our meeting of 30 June, we agreed to request the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to clarify, among other things, whether it is aware of the extent to which other Departments use Benefacts data. In its correspondence, Benefacts set out 94 instances of data provision to public, private and non-profit bodies between 2016 and 2021. Regarding its funding, the organisation has stated that it proposed that it be funded under the Teckal procurement exemption. The committee has been provided with a copy of the advice regarding the feasibility of instituting these arrangements from the professional firm that prepared it. Benefacts states that its board received no response to its proposal from the Department, nor was there any other opportunity to discuss alternative institutional, financial and governance arrangements. It goes on to state that:

Senior officials in the Department of Rural & Community Development advised Benefacts that they would not consider taking over responsibility for funding the company because they regarded Benefacts as a source of “massive procurement risk” [...] Notwithstanding this, the Department appears to have asked Pobal to explore the feasibility of providing a service that is on the face of it very similar to one of those already developed, tested and launched by Benefacts [...] even though of course Pobal is a provider to the State of what are by definition public goods under the Teckal exemption

It is proposed to note and publish this correspondence and to request the consent of Benefacts to also publish its correspondence. Is that agreed? Agreed. I call Deputy Catherine Murphy.