Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will ask the simple question first. The witnesses' organisations give bridging loans to all of these organisations. I am curious. The LEADER programme covers virtually all of rural Ireland, including large towns such as Castlebar, Ballina, Sligo and so on. How much demand do the witnesses see from the deprived urban areas as opposed to from rural areas? Is there disproportionate demand from the lesser populated rural areas where there seems to be great capacity to collect money, organise and get things done? I am just curious as to whether the witnesses have noted any pattern as to how demand is distributed.

On philanthropy, if people want to give their money away, that is fine. It is their choice and their money. They can do what they want. When the State gets involved, depending on how great the State's involvement is, you may be effectively allowing the philanthropist to determine where taxpayers' money goes. When philanthropists boast that they gave €1 million, it should be noted that they actually gave €1 million less all the tax they saved, which depends on the rate of tax kickback. There is therefore a real challenge and issue here, as has been said, unless the State compensates those groups that are unlikely to attract philanthropic funds.

I got lost in Ms Buckley's answer to the previous question because I was coming down the stairs. One place I am always curious about is the United States of America, where philanthropists give very serious amounts of money to support places and so on. However, I have never got to the basis of the tax kickback and found out whether it is given at the marginal rate of personal income tax or some other rate. Do the witnesses have any information on that because it was always the place for it? The boom time here seems to be disappearing daily, such times do not seem to last, but when the previous boom time came, there was great talk about the possibility of philanthropy. I do not like depending too much on it because, when the economy is good, it is easy to get the money but, when it is bad, it is not so easy. Do the witnesses know what the tax relief in America is?

I take it that the money is given back to the taxpayer. I quite like the idea here whereby, if you give more than €250 to a charity, the charity can claim the tax relief so the people donating cannot claim they gave more money than they really gave because they got a tax break on it. I like that particular approach. To the big philanthropists, that might not be so attractive but there is an attraction to it. It is like the scheme we had for dormant accounts. If a body in, for example, the disability sector collected €500,000, whether by bucket collections, from a philanthropist or in some other way, the Government backed it directly with another €500,000. We backed it directly; it was not given to the donors. That could have been collected in small amounts, €20, €30 or €40 at a time, or one person could have just dunked in all of the money.

Do philanthropists tend to go to the more attractive projects? It could be something they have a personal interest in. For example, a philanthropist may have a close connection to somebody with a severe disability and give money to a disability organisation. You also often see philanthropists giving money to universities and so on but they get kudos for that. Do they shy away from the less glamorous organisations, such as charities dealing with ex-prisoners or recovering drug addicts? Does the State have to compensate the charities that are less likely to attract philanthropy? If not, the people at the bottom might lose out.

I do not believe we should allow the private sector to dictate where taxpayers' money goes beyond a certain point. I see the point on leverage but I have a conflict in my own mind about this. It should not be allowed beyond a certain level. That is why I am curious as to whether the witnesses have studied the US model and what the actual amount given by philanthropists is when the tax breaks are considered.