Ms Tricia Nolan:

I thank Senator Keane for her kind words. A 5% cut in funding for us this year is the equivalent of €100,000. That is a drop in the ocean to the public purse but would decimate our infrastructure in terms of the impact it will have on us because we have really been cut over the years. It will cause services to be dampened down even more.

A question was asked about gaps. The south east is a real gap. There is no volunteer centre in Wexford, Kilkenny or Waterford. There are other counties that do not have centres but if one was to look at a major gap on the map, the south east in particular is badly affected.

The Senator asked about philanthropy. I said earlier that the centres receive in-kind funding of over €150,000 per year from the Salesforce.com Foundation so sometimes philanthropy is not just about money. It is about the other things that one can receive from a corporate that are not necessarily monetary.