Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. We are in the process of scoping out where multi-annual funding might begin to grow. As part of the process, we have to pin down exactly what we are funding and what Departments are funding organisations. We do not fund all community and voluntary organisations, of which a large number - 11,000 - are registered with the Charities Regulator.

To give the Deputy a little more information on that development in terms of the scoping exercise, the Department recently entered into an agreement with Pobal to conduct a scoping exercise on a proposal for a centralised grantee database of community and voluntary organisations which have a funding relationship with the State. The objective is that this would be a source of information more generally about the investment being made by the State across communities and will serve to reduce the administrative burden on funders and grantees by adopting a "file once" principle.

I must stress, however, that this is a preliminary scoping exercise and is exploring potential options at this very early stage. If the project is approved on foot of the scoping exercise, it will likely take a few years before the process would be completed and operational.

See this speech in context