Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Unfortunately, it is not just this charity that will suffer, but the entire sector because of the erosion of public trust. Therefore, there must be consequences. Given the number of agencies involved, is there a cross-sectoral arrangement to exchange information? Why was the board not suspended? The Minister of State said that due process should be allowed to proceed. We seem to allow due process in cases where there should be an immediate reaction so that a bad situation is not made worse where there is an issue.

There was a pattern of misrepresentation here which was breathtaking, including the CEO misrepresenting himself as a doctor and a reverend, and stating that people, who were not on the board, were on the board. If RTE could pick that up, why was it not identified in 2006 when the flag started to be raised on this?

Has section 4 of the Charities Act been commenced in order to allow the charity regulator to initiate investigations, and if not, why not?

This will affect the public trust in other charities. We need at least an interim response to this. It cannot be allowed to drift because there will be immediate impacts on the entire charity sector. We have 4,500 charities, many of which do the job that would be done by public agencies in other countries. We rely on them and we rely on public support and undermining it is a really serious issue.

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