Mr. Liam Herrick:

We very much agree. The first thing to say is we can approach this question of political engagement by charities or community organisations by asking how much of charities engaging with the political process we are willing to tolerate. We could also approach it from the perspective that was spelled out by the Charities Regulator in its 2018 documents, which is as something we should encourage. We should encourage our charities, community organisations and youth groups to take part in the political process. Ireland has a number of international obligations under human rights law to create an enabling environment to maximise the extent to which ordinary people can take part in protests and demonstrations and write to Members of the Oireachtas. We should start from the perspective of it being a positive.

It is possible to distinguish activity that is clearly linked to parties, candidates or a side in a referendum campaign. It is possible that we do this through Electoral Acts regulations and lobbying regulations. There are mechanisms for doing this. Outside of this we should encourage and facilitate to the greatest extent possible groups engaging in activity, as long as it is in furtherance of their charitable aims. There are a number of examples where this can become a problem. Deputy Donnelly very astutely pointed to the fact that in Ireland a large proportion of our charities receive some or the majority of their funding from State bodies, such as health bodies or housing bodies. It might often be the case that a youth group is concerned about the provision of resources in its community and might want to protest or express its view on this. We can all envisage a situation where the relevant public or State bodies or Departments might wish to limit its ability to do so. In our view this is an inappropriate restriction on the freedom of expression or freedom of association of these groups. We should not try through charities law to limit their ability to do so.

We also have the example of national advocacy organisations that campaign on very important social questions, such as the position of children in society. Do we want to create a situation where a large organisation working in the area of children's rights would be allowed to raise charitable funds to feed children but would not be allowed to raise charitable funds to raise its public concern about the extent to which children are bound to be in poverty because of the policies of the State? I do not think anybody would like to see this either.

On the international stage Ireland has, and we should be very proud of this, a very strong record of defending civil society, charities and non-governmental organisations in countries where they have been suppressed for political action. Recently, for example, the Irish Government played a very strong role in defending civil society in Israel where the Israeli Government sought to shut down organisations, some of which are partly funded by Irish Aid and the Irish Government. We had an instance recently when one of the largest Irish aid organisations had a fundraising campaign in this jurisdiction because it was concerned about the human rights of people living in the territory of Israel. Complaints were raised that it was an overtly political campaign and not a charitable campaign. We would say that if Irish aid agencies that deliver services on the ground in Gaza feel that, to advance protection of the human rights of the people with whom they work, they need to provide not just food and medicine but to raise political concerns, then they are best placed to make that judgment and not a regulatory body here and certainly not individual political opponents in this jurisdiction who might wish to use the Charities Regulator and the complaints mechanism to cause harm and embarrassment to the aid agencies of which we are so proud.

Our view is we should focus on the very narrow range of activity that is electoral and not limit charities. For example, if the regulator very clearly stated that, if I am raising money for children's rights, I should use that money only for children's rights, and if I were not allowed to engage in political advocacy on behalf of children and was only allowed to provide books and food to children, this would be a very Victorian and limited understanding of what charity means.