Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Burke for that and it is an interesting question because crowdfunding can raise so much money so quickly and I wonder what the degree of regulation and control on that is. I remind any of the members who are participating remotely that if they wish to put a question or observation to the Minister of State, they should use the raise hand function on Microsoft Teams. I want to echo the comments of Deputy Paul Donnelly on the worth of the pre-legislative scrutiny process. It has been a good opportunity for us to drill down into the issues. We have had some excellent inputs, particularly from The Wheel, the ICCL and Charities Institute Ireland. Last week's contribution from the Charities Regulator herself was important in answering or quelling people's fears about what the objectives of this Bill are.

I note that in his opening comment, the Minister of State asked for observations on the proposals that were put forward by the Charities Regulator last week and they were helpful. Something that struck me is that people who you might ordinarily characterise as being on opposite sides of the debate were saying much the same thing and moving in the same direction. There seems to be a consensus across the board that this is a good and important Bill. It has a road to travel yet because we will have to scrutinise it on Second Stage and then it will be back here for Committee Stage, when it will get that line-by-line analysis that will wash through some of those more detailed submissions we received. We will be able to see at that point how the drafters have responded to those concerns.

It deserves repetition, as the Minister of State said in his opening statement, that the regulator engages directly with individual charities to support and enhance their understanding of both statutory reporting requirements and governance standards and that it works with charities to bring them into compliance. The phrase I used last week was "tension between policeman and pal" and the regulator did not want to be identified as a pal but it is about striking the right balance. There must be a recognition that in smaller charities in particular, people are voluntarily putting a lot of their time into a good cause. Those people may sometimes need support and they do not necessarily need the sledgehammer. Elements of this Bill help in that.

It would be fair to say that our consideration of the Bill turned on three main things. First is proportionality and the regulator identified that there is no clear series of proportional responses. There is always the nuclear option and the big stick at the end of the process where a body can be delisted as a charity. It seems to me that you can either ask somebody to be compliant or you can deploy the nuclear option and there does not seem to be a graduated response. It felt to me that the regulator herself was acknowledging that they were sometimes operating in a grey area. It may be the case that primary legislation is not where you want to lay out a proportionality of responses because if you wish to amend that at any stage it is a much more difficult process but I invite the Minister of State to comment on that.

I want to pick up on Senator Burke's point on sufficient staffing. One of the things we were worried about includes those material changes to the constitution and if every comma changed in the constitution had to be reported to the Charities Regulator. Similarly a lot of people were worried about the significant event issue. If every single potential significant event was to be reported to the Charities Regulator, there would not be enough staffing in the world to deal with every one of those things. The proposed heads of Bill brought forward by the Charities Regulator last week, particularly the head on that charitable purpose in an organisation's constitution, helped to clarify that, for me in any case. What was brought forward with the use of the High Court as opposed to an appeals mechanism and things like that is important as well.

Those are the three cruxes of this Bill that need to be remedied: proportionality; the issue around changes to the constitution; and significant events and guidance on reporting of same. I ask the Minister of State to comment on those three points.