Mr. Diarmaid Ó Corrbuí:

As Mr. Mulconry already mentioned, the sector is quite big when one considers it. There are about 12,000 not-for-profit organisations in the country, including every parish and county. However, not-for-profit organisations are struggling with reduced funding, increased compliance requirements and inefficient business processes, which hamper their impact.

Dublin is one of the shared service capitals of Europe. We can see huge potential for the development of a top quality, cost-effective national shared services centre for the not-for-profit sector. This would enable the not-for-profits to focus more attention on their core mission activity which is not administration but delivering valuable social services around the country.

The successful implementation of a shared services model can deliver significant savings from 15% to 30%, but it comes with a big "if". It requires significant up-front investment and the payback takes time. The Carmichael Centre for Voluntary Groups is a shared services centre and one of the first in the country. We have 47 different groups working the model very effectively. It allows small organisations to be effective without the requirement of having to have their own back-office administration and services.

We could see this model being leveraged quite usefully around the country and in the capital. Critical success factors for shared services are economies of scale, efficient deployment of best practice technologies, significant up-front investment - the lack of which causes difficulties for the sector - a clear business case, and a strong incentive to go down the shared services route. At the moment that incentive is lacking. The current fragmentation of the not-for-profit sector makes it difficult to take this step on its own. It will require leadership and support from State funders to help us on that journey.