Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have had reason to suspend and later restore funding to Scouting Ireland on a number of occasions in the last year. I first withheld funding in April because of concerns relating to governance arrangements.

In May, I appointed Ms Jillian van Turnhout, as an independent expert, to examine governance and related issues within Scouting Ireland. Her report made recommendations in the areas of safeguarding, management of the organisation, governance proposals and charities regulation and indicated that the restoration of funding to Scouting Ireland should be clearly linked to the successful implementation of these recommendations.

Following confirmation of the board's commitment to implement all of Ms van Turnhout's recommendations, I decided to provide Scouting Ireland with interim funding from June for a further three month period up until the end of September. In providing this interim funding, I requested that Scouting Ireland provide me with a further report by 24 September. It did so, and set out the progress in implementing the outstanding recommendations of the review of Scouting Ireland.

At the end of September, the former board of Scouting Ireland voted to reinstate the chief scout as chair of their forthcoming EGM. Shortly afterwards, I received letters from the then interim chair and Mr. Ian Elliott setting out their serious concerns about the board's actions and its ability to govern the organisation properly. I decided to suspend funding further for as long as the then board was in place. A new board was elected at the EGM on 6 October.

Given the significant progress made by Scouting Ireland in implementing Ms van Turnhout's recommendations and in the essential governance changes committed to by the organisation, I then restored funding to Scouting Ireland until the end of April 2019. I have requested a further progress report from the organisation by the end of March 2019, as well as copies of the independent barrister's report and the final lan Elliott report of the individual case review he conducted.

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