Mr. Oisín Coghlan:

In concert with that, Commissioner Michael McGrath's DG has recently launched a public consultation on a new civil society strategy for the European Union with the goal to support, protect and empower civil society organisations. This will ultimately result in a communication from the commission in due course. I do not think there will be legislative proposals, so it will not go through a legislative process in the European Union but there could well be Council conclusions in response to it.

The timeline is not entirely clear yet but it may well be that some time during the Irish Presidency a Council chaired by an Irish Minister will be asked to facilitate conclusion about a civil society strategy overseen by the Irish Commissioner. Given that Ireland has so far been relatively strong in its public understanding of what charities and civil society organisations really are as opposed to the abstracted weaponisation we are seeing elsewhere, there could be a really positive opportunity there for Irish civil society, the Irish Government, the Irish Commissioner and, to the extent it is involved, the Parliament, to paint that positive community charity-based vision of what we think that social contribution looks like.