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

I thank the Deputy. This specific issue is one we will start tackling this year. We hope to announce in the near future an advisory group to help us develop this policy. It is worth citing the top five things that motivate philanthropic giving as listed in the Indecon report. These are care about the cause, people believing they can make a difference, people believing we all need to help solve social problems, trusting the organisations being donated to and wanting to help people who are less fortunate. These are very good intentions that we want to support more. While there is a reasonable level of philanthropic giving in Ireland, compared to other European countries of a similar level we are quite low. It is an area of untapped potential and we will be deciding this year, through the national policy development process, how we facilitate more of these people who want to do the things that we do in government also. There will be a challenge because much philanthropic giving is very personal and there is a balancing act in trying to encourage it to align to some extent with government priorities also. It is a delicate balancing act. We want to facilitate people to give to the causes that they want to.

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