Mr. Colin McCrea:

I thank the Deputy. Members of the public in Ireland are generous in their giving and we all know that. There are 30 grant making foundations in the country. If we were to match the UK, we would increase that number to 500 and, therefore, we are way behind in the number of foundations we have. Mr. Forrest brought up the difficulties of operating across borders and setting up a foundation is difficult in itself. However, one of the problems we face is that small countries suffer disproportionately in terms of cross-border philanthropy. Few British foundations operate in the Republic of Ireland. The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust is a notable exception but a great number of them operate in Northern Ireland. They do not come south and one of the reasons is it is difficult to do so. One of the jobs I had until last month was with Atlantic Philanthropies. We set up different organisations in every country we operate in.