Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

(a) To insert the following after "diminished public trust in the sector":"-- the charity sector has been used by successive Governments to elude their responsibility to provide essential State funded services especially in areas of housing and health; the unregulated nature of much of this sector is a reflection of its misuse by Governments as a substitute for State funded services;

-- this non-profit sector was in the front line of cuts during the recession and that this had a profound impact on already vulnerable service users;" and(b) To insert the following after "calls on the Government to":"-- undertake a review on how best to incorporate those charities presently working in the housing and health sectors, providing essential services which should be the remit of the State, into the State bodies assigned to these areas in order to put those services on a secure financial footing and to end the duplicity in corporate and board structures and avoid the multiplicity of CEOs and other high earning individuals;"

I support the amendments. A number of Deputies have stated that they would not like to see a situation in which the majority of charities were subsumed into the public sector. The example of the HSE was given, but no real reason was given as to why. Why not? It would increase the level of democratic accountability in those services and be progressive from social and tax points of view, as it would point towards a progressive tax system as opposed to people being hit for charity donations time and again and more and more service user fees being introduced.

I will concentrate on a particular reason, namely, that it would end the outsourcing of services, which allows them to be run on the cheap, particularly in terms of labour. A 2015 report found that, in the majority of cases, pay rates in the community, voluntary and charity sectors were significantly below those in the private sector, albeit not for the executives. There were inflated executive salaries and low pay for almost everyone else. I will address the non-profit sector. Although it is broader than the charity sector, the latter is an important part of it. In 2013, the CEO of Focus Ireland was paid €137,000. That operation employs many people via JobBridge and community employment schemes and it closed its defined benefit pension scheme that year. Ireland's largest housing association, the Clúid, paid its CEO €120,000 in 2013. Some €2.43 million in wages was divided between the 29 best remunerated persons in the company while the rest of the rest of the staff received an average of €18,500 per year.

In the non-profit sector, 40% of the workforce are part-time and 62% do not have trade union membership. In only 6% of those organisations are more than 50% of staff unionised. A survey conducted by The Wheel of the 2009-12 period found that, of the State's non-profit organisations, 37% had implemented pay freezes, 25% had reduced pay, 14% had cut workers' hours and 13% had increased hours without a commensurate increase in pay. These are powerful reasons for supporting the amendment and the idea that the non-profit bodies, including the majority of the charity sector, and their staff should be subsumed into the public sector with staff on decent public sector pay and conditions.

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