Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Members for raising this important issue. I am deeply concerned by the recent revelations about Console and other charitable organisations. The public must have confidence that the money they donate to charity will be managed and used correctly at all times. Anything less is a betrayal of the goodwill of thousands of people around the country and of the taxpayer. I say "betrayal" because in the case of Console the people's trust has been betrayed. The unwritten agreement between charities and their supporters that the people's money will be efficiently and appropriately used has been broken.

The Irish people are charitable by nature and they expect that the charity sector will conduct its business in an honest and professional manner. Trust, integrity and ethics are important words. They mean something. The work of charitable organisations contributes so much to the public good. Effective regulation of the sector is, therefore, very important and must be a priority to ensure that the various scandals that have arisen in the sector do not arise in the future.

The establishment of the Charities Regulatory Authority was a personal priority when I became Minister for Justice and Equality. I established the regulator as an independent agency shortly after I became Minister in October 2014 under the provisions of the original Act of 2009. As Deputies are aware, the aim of the regulator is to provide for better regulation of charitable organisations through a framework of registration, regulation and support. Regulating a large and previously unregulated sector is a challenge, and the scale of the job is not to be underestimated. The task was, and is, to build a framework of accountability for a huge and largely unregulated sector that depends on the goodwill of people. One of the key roles of the regulator is to safeguard the future of the charity sector, and there has been significant progress. I want to outline this.

The regulator has a wide range of functions under the terms of the Act which are being introduced on a phased basis, and I want to illustrate the tasks which have had to be undertaken by the regulator since it was established.

The initial priority was on the development of the register, and Deputy Catherine Murphy has outlined the numbers that are on the register of charities. There are 8,000 charities registered. These are people who had charitable status with the Revenue. In addition, any charity that was established before October 2014 and not automatically registered was required to apply directly to the regulator for inclusion on the register, and it was very difficult for the regulator to begin to get charities to apply for registration. There were very low numbers at first, despite information campaigns, appeals to the sector and various information initiatives, but that has begun to happen now. That was the focus of the register because, in the first instance, one must ensure that all charities in the country are registered and that we are aware of who they are, where they are and what they are doing. Some 1,500 extra applications for inclusion on the register are being processed by the regulatory authority along with a separate registration process for 3,600 schools. Schools, which very often have charitable status, have to be registered as well, so one can begin to see the scale of the task. There are well over 12,500 charitable organisations, and that may not be the complete number because there may well be charities out there, particularly smaller charities, that have not registered. I, therefore, appeal to charities that it is obligatory to register with the Charities Regulatory Authority now.

In total, the regulator is engaged with the numbers I have mentioned. In addition, in the period since the regulator has been established, 300 complaints have been made to it against 132 different entities, the majority of which were charities. These concerns have ranged from very mild queries, concerns or questions about different charities to some more serious complaints. The Charities Regulatory Authority, with which I discussed this issue in detail yesterday, is working through all of those complaints and dealing with them. There was an interim arrangement put in place by the authority at my request last year to deal with such complaints. The number of complaints we are seeing involves only 1% of the total number of charities in the country but is nevertheless extremely important, and we can see the damage that is done every time we see a scandal exposed about a charity.

I have been working to ensure that the authority has the necessary staff and financial resources to achieve all its goals, but Part 4 is important as well. I signed the statutory instrument necessary to commence that last week and it will take effect from 5 September. There has been an issue about resources. The legislation was enacted, but not commenced, in 2009 under the then Administration. The previous Government began to implement the various parts of it. Part 4 confers the investigatory and enforcement powers on the regulator. Recruitment of the staff necessary to do that work is under way and has been ongoing this year, and they will be in place from September to support these critically important functions. However, the first job that had to be done was registration. The purpose of this was to discover what the charities are out there. We have given a budget increase of over 88% to the regulator this year in order to allow for the full complement of staff to be taken on. There is an excellent board in place - it is taking its responsibilities very seriously and working through the various issues. I am also discussing with the regulator a timeline for the commencement of the remaining sections in Part 7. I expect to be in a position to bring into force some further sections in part 7 of the Act next week.

I want to outline some of the actions which the regulator took once it became aware of the situation at Console. Criminal allegations are outside its remit. However, on 30 June, shortly after it received notice of the concerns about Console - it did not know until a couple of weeks ago that there were issues regarding Console; that was the first the Charities Regulatory Authority heard of the problems - it used its statutory powers to address matters by appointing five new trustees, with the competence and skills to support the charity to the charity's board, complementing the legal moves made by the charity itself. The regulator authorised and supported legal action in the High Court to protect the charity's assets. The regulator has been very active.

I do not have time to go into the requirements under sections 38 and 39 but my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy McEntee, will do so. I also want to make a quick point about the legal requirements on auditors, who have a very important role to play here. There are duties on auditors to report theft and fraud offences and suspected money laundering. That is dealt with under the criminal justice legislation already in place, namely, sections 17 and 19 of the Criminal Justice Act 2011.

The motion also calls for the establishment of an anti-corruption agency. I want to make a number of points in that regard. The law in the area of corruption has been significantly strengthened by the enactment of the Central Bank (Supervision and Enforcement) Act 2013, the Companies Act 2014, the Electoral (Amendment) (Political Funding) Act 2012, the Ombudsman (Amendment) Act 2012, the Protected Disclosures Act 2014, the Freedom of Information Act 2014 and the Regulation of Lobbying Act 2015. The Criminal Justice Act 2011 has given the Garda quite innovative powers to deal with the investigation of white collar crime. I am just about finalising a criminal justice (corruption) Bill as well.

The motion suggests the establishment of a single anti-corruption agency. I appreciate that the Deputies are motivated by a concern to enhance the way in which a broad range of wrongdoing is addressed. We need further discussion on how the amalgamation of the functions of a wide range of agencies such as I have described, with widely varying functions would, of itself, enhance the capacity of the State to fight corruption. However, I see the general principle that the Deputies are requesting here and I accept the overall motion.

I appreciate the concerns expressed by Deputy Michael Collins and others in their amendment regarding small, locally-based charities and I can accept that amendment. However, like the Deputies who proposed this motion, I do not favour the other two amendments that have been put forward because I feel that they are too broad in their application and underestimate some of the ways in which charities work and the potential they have to contribute to our society.

I cannot emphasise enough that there is a responsibility on many different bodies, on charities themselves and on those who see wrongdoing to report it. If any member of the public or any organisation has evidence that there are breaches of the law regarding charities, this information should be passed on to the relevant authority. Suspected criminal activity should be reported to the Garda. Fraud and white-collar crime are criminal activities. The Charities Regulatory Authority will, as he has pledged to do, work with other State bodies to ensure co-operation and the appropriate sharing of information. The points which Deputy Donnelly has raised are relevant. I will forward them to the Charities Regulatory Authority, if the Deputy has not already done so, but he raises very relevant points about charitable status.

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