Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The charities legislation is an absolute priority. I checked yesterday and it is at an advanced stage. We hope it will be in the House early in the new year. Parliamentary counsel will work on it full time until Christmas.

The Indecon report does precisely what Deputy Sargent asked to advance the key principles of the White Paper on supporting voluntary activity, which came out of the work done by the group chaired by Chris Flood. That forms an important part of the information under consideration in the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs. There are vast sums of money going into what was ADM Limited, now Pobal. Millions are going into the sector in addition to what was put in five years ago, before this work started. It is a well funded and highly staffed area. One sector of it employs 800 or 900 people on a full-time basis, although they may be on contracts, but huge numbers work in the entire area.

There was a lot of talk after that of federations, networks, umbrella bodies and full-time work but that is not the broad sense of citizenship — people who are full time or working in community bodies — it is about the citizenship of the country. That is the model in other countries. Obviously, all issues of modern life would be included in any report. Circumstances and lifestyles change over time and this feeds into activity. Active citizens are involved in a broader range of projects than 20 years ago, with more organised activities and competitions taking place year-round. The position has changed. Some of the activities require funding and some do not, they simply require structures.

The Deputy asked what I meant by taking this forward. I asked the task force not to report on everything that happens but to make broad recommendations that we can implement to improve the sector. We know what happens but we need concrete proposals that we can implement to progress active citizenship.

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