Ms Jane-Ann McKenna:

I will go through some of those. Dóchas has been bringing the sector together for more than 50 years and it is very much focused on international development and humanitarian organisations. Other networks are broader in terms of charity bases. With regard to accountability, it was actually Dóchas that set up the governance code. This was years ago before the Charities Regulator was in place. We looked at how we could align our governance to ensure best standards of practice. That was superseded by the regulator but we are still looking at key standards of practice within the sector.

A couple of standards on which we are working with member organisations concern safeguarding. We have a leadership safeguarding charter for applying best standards of practice on the ground. There is also a focus on ethical communication. It is a case of asking how to represent and speak about those we exist to support in the communities. These are some of the key standards of practice. They concern where we feel, with our members, that they need the most support and where they want us to come together and have peer learning in various areas.

More broadly, we consider several different areas, including programmatically in terms of disability inclusion, as the Senator mentioned. It is actually a matter of shared learning and peer learning and of seeing where there are opportunities to partner up, as often happens among our members. We have organisations – they would be more mainstream – that partner up with the likes of Christian Blind Mission, CBM, for training on, for example, disability inclusion in their programmes. Therefore, there are opportunities. A number of our members come together and actively collaborate to enhance their programmes. That is really what we try to do. Obviously, we do a lot of policy work in these areas, particularly around ODA, climate and debt. While we engage with the Department on that, we are also really focused on ensuring and building collaboration between organisations and seeing where we can work together for the best impact.

Worldview, which has a timeframe of five years, is a tool for our members and for organisations related to the question of how we can bring the Irish public along with us. The geopolitical situation is changing rapidly and we want to ensure that when we are talking about these issues, including overseas development, what is happening in Gaza and the importance of independence and impartiality, we are able to communicate effectively in a way people understand. Part of what Worldview is about is understanding a little more about where the public are and how we can bring them along regarding some of these key issues.

Through the Worldview research, which entails a longitudinal study, we can compare today with five years ago. We know that three out of four people, or 75%, on average support ODA, and that has remained consistent, but we are seeing increasing polarisation between those who are very in favour and others. There is a slight increase in the proportion of people who are disengaged. What we are seeing is that the middle grouping in the Irish population is getting smaller, whereby people may not be so much staying on the fence as going to one side or the other. It is really important for us to understand that in order that we can ensure we are communicating more effectively and that people understand what the issues we are talking about, including debt and climate, mean for those on the ground in the global south and why it is important that Ireland leads on them.