Ms Patricia Quinn:

One of the very important aspects is to disclose to the public and to the people of Ireland what form volunteerism and civil society organising actually takes in this State. It is remarkable that sometimes people would say there are too many charities in Ireland. By international comparative standards, when one looks at international statistical comparisons, the number of volunteer organisations that we account for is very low. This is because other European countries typically account for the small associations and clubs and the organisations that provide all kinds of immeasurable benefits to people in local communities; what used to be called social capital. These are not actually counted statistically when we think about the way we organise our life in Ireland. This is one of the things Benefacts hopes to contribute; to provide a single extensive database that provides a better understanding for people making decisions about where to live, about how to educate their children, about recreational matters and about where they want to put their voluntary effort and their money. There are many ways in which life is organised, which are encaptured and engrossed in the work of volunteer organisations that are not well understood. At the minimum this is what we would set out to do. Obviously there are transactional services we can provide and we have spoken about some of these today but I would not want to let the opportunity pass without saying that it is not all about the cost of these organisations or the funding that is provided to them. It is about the changes they make to the quality of our lives and the quality of our society. Benefacts is setting out to document and map this and to make information about it transparently available to everybody.