Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The members of the Committee of Public Accounts are to be commended on the manner in which they conducted yesterday's hearing with the Central Remedial Clinic. Some of the practices that were revealed during yesterday's hearing are unacceptable. These include the use of charitable donations to top-up lavish executive salaries and pension payouts, the highly irregular recruitment process for the chief executive and the mystery annual payment of €660,000 to the Mater hospital. The saddest part of all this is that the children and adults with physical disabilities who rely on the services of the CRC will potentially suffer as public donations inevitably fall off. There is also a growing concern now that public trust and confidence in charities generally will be negatively affected by this controversy.

If we want people to continue to support charities as generously as they always have done, they need to be assured that their hard-earned money will be spent on those for whom it is intended. We would be naive to think that the issues at the CRC pertain only to that organisation and that it is the only publicly funded body to operate in this manner. The Minister for Health said late last month that of the 44 so-called section 38 bodies contacted by the HSE, more than half, 24 of them, stated they did not comply with public sector pay policy. A further eight did not even bother to reply to the HSE. What about the 2,000 or so section 39 bodies that also receive substantial funding from the HSE? Do we know what is going on within these organisations?

We await the implementation of the Charities Act 2009. The Act expressly provides for the Minister for Justice and Equality to regulate for narrative and financial disclosure standards. Were these standards in force they would require every charity of any significant scale to provide a report on the sources of its revenues, the pay bands of its highest paid employees, the costs of governance and the specific uses to which it puts income and assets. Will the Tánaiste advise the House when this legislation will be enacted? In the meantime, will the Tánaiste ensure the statement of recommended practice of charities, which is mandatory in England, Wales and Scotland, becomes mandatory in Ireland for the largest organisations funded by the HSE?

See this speech in context