Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

There will be a large amount of repetition of the contributions made by the Minister of State and members of the main Opposition party. I echo what Deputy Paul Donnelly said about the PLS process in which the committee engaged. It was useful. One of the aspects that was most useful had to do with how there was a fair amount of anxiety when the heads of the Bill were produced. The session with the Charities Regulator was useful in teasing through those concerns. Many of the charities watching that session found that many of their concerns were assuaged when the regulator spoke, particularly around the idea of a proportionality of response, a matter that figured a great deal in the Minister’s contributions at PLS.

I shall rewind a little and repeat a point that should be made, namely, that the charities sector does a great deal of good work. There are many people involved. There is a culture of volunteerism and charity. People just want to muck in and make their communities better. That is an important impulse within Irish society and one that we do not want to put barriers in front of, for example, the issues of governance and responsibilities that one must take on when deciding to become a member of a board or a trustee. We want to make it as easy as possible for people to get involved while ensuring that we have the necessary safeguards.

Something that we need to acknowledge - it has already been acknowledged in this debate - is that the bad behaviour of a small number of charities in the past has had quite a negative impact on the charities sector in general in terms of its ability to fundraise and operate. Across the sector, people who never put a foot wrong in terms of their governance, fundraising and so on have had to deal with reputational damage.

I agree with Deputies that there are functions discharged within society by the charitable sector that more correctly belong to the State. There are whole swathes of the operations that charities do that the State historically has not stepped into or has not stepped into sufficiently. While I value and acknowledge the work of people involved in the charitable sector, there is a responsibility on us as a State to consider those sections that are more appropriate to be under the control of the State. That does not apply to every charity, but applies to some charities and is something that should be considered.

I will pick up on the point made about the advancement of human rights. It is a welcome provision that has been built into the Bill. The people who are examining this Bill, including people in the ICCL, have a slight concern that they do not quite know what has been specified in the Bill, particularly in terms of preparation. They are going to be given six months to prepare, but it would be useful for the Department to pre-engage. This Bill still has quite a way to run and it will revert to our committee for Committee Stage and will be discussed on Report Stage before going to the Seanad. Why not give those outfits a little bit of structure now, engage with their concerns and help them to lay the groundwork so that the clock does not start ticking as soon as the President signs off on the legislation and they find themselves with six months in which to do the work?

I was taken with Deputy Ó Laoghaire’s suggestion about having a little funding for governance. It is difficult to make the case for such funding when fundraising. When people go out shaking buckets and get asked what it will be used for, they will say it will be used to draw up the charity's new governance model. The public are not going to put money into the bucket. They want to get jerseys and footballs, for example. It is not a bad idea to have some dedicated funding. It would actually pay the State back in the long run to give charities a few bob to get their corporate governance structures correct, which would be the only activity for which it could be used. This would have a long-term benefit.

I wish to touch briefly on the PLS report. I thank the staff of the Oireachtas Library and Research Service for the comprehensive Bill digest they produced. Our committee produced nine recommendations, three of which have been accepted in full, three of which have been accepted in part, and three of which have not been accepted. I will run through some of the points that occur to me as I scan through the document. The first concerns the intermediate sanction. The issues that dominated our committee discussions concerned the proportionality of the response and the definition of “significant events”. I served on a school board for many years and we were always horizon scanning, but we need to explain to people in a little more detail what the situation will look like so that, on the one hand, a large number of issues do not arrive into the Charities Regulator that do not need to be dealt with by it at all and, on the other hand, we will not miss things that should be reported.

The idea of using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut was also considered. If an organisation is removed from the charities register, it is done and dusted as a charity. The session with the Charities Regulator was important in this regard because it allayed many of the fears, but the recommendation in our PLS report that we should move to more intermediate sanctions has been taken on in large part in this Bill and is helpful. It should not be a case of one strike and out.

We have to be a little clearer on the wording on political advocacy and ensure we get the balance right. A political party or body instituted for one purpose only should not be regarded as a charity, but we need to get the balance right so that people feel that, as part of their charity work, they can engage in authentic and justifiable political advocacy.

On crowdfunding, this was recommendation No. 9. An example is the "Buy Caio a Pint" GoFundMe in the wake of the horrible atrocity on Parnell Square. It raised €370,000, a sizeable amount of money. As we see digital disruption in so many parts of our society, we need to make sure that when somebody opens a GoFundMe page - there was a whole Joe Duffy episode on that - the money gets to the right person in the end. It is easily abused. It is an area we need to move into. It may not be appropriate for this Bill but as a Government we need to look at how to regulate a new type of fundraising which is not currently adequately covered under legislation.

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