Ms Deirdre Mortell:

I thank Deputy O'Donnell for his question. I can speak from two angles. I am a co-founder of the One Foundation and, until approximately one week ago, ran it for the past ten years. Setting up a foundation or fund equivalent to the social innovation fund takes no time at all, but raising capital takes time. One can do nothing until one has the capital to reinvest or re-grant, depending on one's point of view. Hence, the urgency.

I will cite a few examples from my experience in the One Foundation. We were involved in providing growth capital to the not-for-profit sector. It largely went to social services, for example, children's services, youth services, some human rights services, migrant services and education. For the past seven years or so, we have been involved in providing growth capital to Educate Together. We did not provide it all in one chunk. We took three decisions at different points and Educate Together needed to re-satisfy the criteria each time. In that period, Educate Together has entered the second level sector and will open three new schools in 2014 with all of the jobs and local investment that entails, for example, building the schools and satisfying parental needs in the areas in question. During that eight-year period, Educate Together also added 12,000 new primary school pupils and approximately 30 new primary schools to its network. This is substantial.

Obviously it is in partnership with the State. It was growth capital from One Foundation that enabled them to be in the game and provide that option to parents, who ultimately, as is the current Government policy, will vote on which education provider they want in each area. That is a lot of jobs for not that much money.

That is a quick flavour of what is out there, but let me mention Headstrong, the national centre for youth mental health services that we co-founded with Mr. Tony Bates. It is a separate organisation that provides youth mental health services and it was founded in 2007, so it is not that old. It developed a Jigsaw model that provides, for the first time, integrated youth mental health services for 14 to 25 year olds. Ten sites have opened that are located all around the country, including in Ballymun, Donegal, Kerry and Galway, and there are a number of other Dublin initiatives. There is 26-county coverage, there are many high-quality jobs, and, more importantly, 3,600 young people have been able to access services that they could not get before 2008, when it opened. In addition, 90% of them have met their mental health goals and exited the service. The initiative is cost-effective, helps young people, prevents suicide and creates jobs. It is a win-win scenario.

I have given just two examples of things that we did in the One Foundation. I shall talk a little bit about the potential social innovation fund because it does not exist yet but the company has just been registered.