Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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When you go looking for the website now, you are told it is now offline. It was a very useful database that was open source and widely used. This was terminated at very short notice. It has been reported that the people operating it basically found out by way of an FOI request that was subsequently published in one of the newspapers. According to the Department's response, it was a Pathfinder project. What does that mean? I think we need to go back to the Department and find out exactly what it means.

There are something like 12,000 charities in the country, some of which are schools, sports clubs and charities in the traditional meaning of the word. Some of it is for tax purposes but some of those sports clubs would not be charities. This database would have gathered a significant amount of information and was very open and transparent. If anything, it provided a level playing pitch in terms of the not-for-profits in that the information was available and they did not have to buy-in expensive consultants to do pieces of work but could do some of the work themselves based on the information that was available. I think it is a significant loss. There was significant public investment in it.

It does not appear as if any successor initiative is ready to go so this database will be lost. Every day, you lose a database you are not populating means your database is out of date or you must go back and fill it. I cannot understand why there was no successor initiative that would pick up where the database left off. Do we know how much it is going to cost to develop a similar database? Do we know the timeline involved in that? I cannot get over the range of individuals and entities that use this database. Since I started raising the matter, I have received quite a lot of communication relating to it. The Benefacts people were treated deplorably. If something can be cut off at very short notice, it does nothing to build confidence in sectors.

There appears to be an absence of any kind of dialogue. Maybe I am misunderstanding that. Maybe we should ask the Department whether dialogue took place or whether that was a misrepresentation in the papers. I would like to know what dialogue took place with the Department in advance of that and what engagement the Department had with the Department of Rural and Community Development, which I understand is the Department that will be required to develop an alternative option. My understanding is that there is a very elaborate oversight funding agreement. I think we should ask if this was the case.

I also understand that there was a concern that there was a procurement risk through having this database. There are other entities such as the ESRI that have an exemption and there is no procurement risk. I also have concerns about a large firm that must be brought in to do work having a view on a not-for-profit. There is something very odd about this. The biggest loss is the fact that there was a big investment of taxpayers' money in a database that was heavily used by a cross section of the community and heavily relied on and it has just been dispensed with without any replacement. That is the ultimate waste of public money and I want to know where the value for money was in this.