Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am disappointed with the answer because it is important to have independent verification of information and data. Benefacts provided Ireland's only comprehensive and publicly available database of civil society, non-profit and voluntary organisations in Ireland. It provided specialised data services to the non-profit sector, State and others. The support it received enabled it to deliver a comprehensive database of all Irish non-profit organisations. It was updated daily and represented a unique compendium of Ireland's 34,000 civil society organisations. It fed into the Central Statistics Office and had a website. It provided a free public report for the sector. Many of us have used data that Benefacts has provided.

Before Benefacts, there were no data on which to build a reliable picture of Ireland's highly diverse €14 billion sector, with its more than 34,000 non-profit organisations and 165,000 employees. All the data we have came directly from Benefacts. I am very worried that many of the data will now go all over the place and that there will be no centralised group or organisation, independent of the State, that we can use.

See this speech in context