Mr. Martin Shanahan:

I have a few comments. First, on the points made by Senator Healy Eames, as for it being a little understood sector, clearly the purpose of the report was to try to shed greater light on the sector. Obviously, it was not about producing a report at the end but was about bringing together the sector to discuss these matters. The process probably is as important as the final output in that regard, because the stakeholders had a lot of opportunities to engage with one another and with Forfás through this process. As for the question on governance models, a number of governance models are used in the sector. However, based on other work, we estimate that more than 80% of social enterprises are established as limited companies. In many cases, they have charitable status in addition to being limited companies. The co-operative model obviously is another that exists. Our advice is that social enterprises should look at what model best suits its business activity, in that one size does not fit all in this regard. As the Senator will be aware of the recent announcements regarding the charities regulator and what will happen within that sector, I do not propose to go into that.

Perhaps I will couple the Senator's other comments together with questions Deputy Donnelly has asked regarding what is happening in the sector. As I noted in my presentation, more than 1,400 social enterprises are currently being supported. They draw funding from various sources, some of them trade commercially and there is activity happening on the ground. This is not new and there is activity. At present, they are supported by a range of different initiatives, primarily through the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and the Leader programme to which the Senator referred under the local community and development programme. The Senator obviously is also correct in stating that the aforementioned programme ran until 2013 and that proposals are now being developed for a further iteration of it. Other supports are available under the Department of Social Protection and again, it depends on the type of proposal that is being put forward as to which of these fits best with the model that has been proposed. Finally, on the implementation, as I already have noted, the Minister and the interdepartmental committee are currently setting out an implementation plan. As the Deputy will understand, I cannot pre-empt what that is but there is a commitment to take this forward.

On the microenterprise loan fund, I am not in a position to answer the Deputy but will be happy to revert to him separately and establish what is happening in that regard. On the Deputy's further question as to the reason Ireland is so far below the European average, as measured by percentage of GDP, we are currently at 2.5% relative to the 6% average. I do not believe there is any easy answer to give to the Deputy. He referred to the ethos and the nature of volunteering that exists in Ireland. Some of it may relate to capacity building within the sector and there are a lot of examples of small social enterprises that may have the ability to scale but have not done so due to their internal capacity. This was an area to which Forfás referred in the report, namely, the need to build this business capability, largely within those enterprises, to enable them to bring forward business plans and to manage things on a more commercial basis. However, I do not have an easy answer to that question.