John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)

The grouping includes amendments that relate to the new register of charities. It is recognised that the establishment and maintenance of the register will give rise to costs. The purpose of amendment No. 13 is to allow greater flexibility in the future in terms of maintaining the register of charities. The amendment specifically seeks to give the authority, when directed by the Minister, options to use material from other relevant electronic data bases, including any that have been or are being supported in whole or in part by public funds in maintaining the register.

By way of background, over the past two years my Department has provided funding, together with the EU and a number of philanthropic sources, towards a feasibility study to establish whether it might be possible to set up a GuideStar Ireland. For those Deputies who may be unfamiliar with the concept, GuideStar is founded upon the provision of an extensive, free searchable web data base of all non-profit organisations in a country. It is constituted as a non-profit entity in all countries where it has been established or is in development. These include the USA, the UK, Canada, Israel and Germany. In countries where they are established, GuideStars are regarded as the authoritative source of information about the entire non-profit sector. This would include the charity sector.

This amendment seeks to ensure there will be no impediment preventing the authority, under direction of the Minister, from engaging with an external data provider such as a future GuideStar Ireland with regard to the provision of material to assist in maintaining the register of charities. Although there is no certainty that a GuideStar Ireland, or similar project, will proceed, or that there will be any public money available for such a venture, it would be remiss for the legislation not to provide for the possibility of such an arrangement, particularly were it to be the case that public funds had been expended on the potential source of data. The legal advice to me is that the most direct way to ensure this is to include a provision for an appropriate direction for the Minister to the authority. I stress that such a direction would only apply with regard to the maintenance of the register of charities. I believe this amendment will ensure efficiency, value for money and better joined up Government in the future.

Amendment No. 18 is a technical amendment clarifying that section 39(4) applies only to applicants under that section and not to charitable organisations deemed under section 40 which will not have to go through the application process as set out in section 39. Throughout the consideration of this Bill in the Houses of the Oireachtas we have looked consciously at ways to ensure that the administrative burden imposed by the legislation does not prove unmanageable, especially for smaller charities. It is recognised that on application for registration charities must file a comprehensive list of documentation. The amendment I introduced in the Dáil to deem existing charities as automatically registered goes a long way towards alleviating the registration burden for existing charities.

However, although I consider that larger charities, in particular, should provide the range of information listed, I recognise that smaller charities, or particular categories of charity, may have difficulty in fulfilling this requirement. With this in mind I propose amendment No. 20 and the related, necessary technical amendment, No. 19, under which the authority, with the consent of the Minister, can reduce the number of documents that particular charities are required to file on registration. This Seanad amendment was welcomed by the charities sector and I commend it to the House.

Seanad amendments Nos. 21 and 22 both correct cross-references to other sections of the Bill that should have been made following previous amendments.

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