Mr. Ivan Cooper:

Our presentation will be split between Ms Finlay and me. I thank the Chair and the members of the committee for the invitation to speak today on the topic of alliance-building to strengthen the European Union. As The Wheel's director of public policy, I am delighted to have the opportunity to present our position and thoughts on the subject. As indicated, I am joined today by our European programmes manager, Ms Deirdre Finlay.

The Wheel is Ireland’s national association of community and voluntary organisations, charities and social enterprises. We have almost 1,600 member organisations and this year we proudly celebrate our 20th anniversary. I will provide a little background information on the organisation. It may come as a surprise to members that Ireland's community and voluntary sector is very large. More than 29,000 community, voluntary and charitable organisations work day in, day out in every community in the country. They support people in living independent lives, support people with disabilities and medical conditions and help older people, children and young people to realise their potential. Much of this is new information. The Charities Regulator estimates that the community and voluntary sector turns over €14 billion per annum, about half of which comes from Government sources for the provision of services. The rest is raised by organisations themselves. The sector employs 150,000 people as well as benefitting from the voluntary work of more than 50,000 volunteer board members and more than 500,000 operational volunteers. These people form the backbone of the ethos of volunteerism and social good that we pride ourselves on in Ireland. These numbers are relevant to the case we will put forward this afternoon on alliance-building across Europe.

While many community and voluntary organisations participate in European programmes such as Horizon 2020, INTERREG, PEACE and Erasmus+, our experience is that there is huge unrealised potential in the voluntary sector for greater participation in European programmes. Moreover, this increased potential would greatly increase Ireland's share of European programme funding to the benefit of everyone. It would also greatly aid alliance-building and strengthen the European Union. This is the core of the position we will articulate. To do that I will yield to my colleague, Ms Deirdre Finlay, European programmes manager with The Wheel.