Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this Bill and the opportunity to speak about it. Strengthening the role of and support for charities within society is important. I note the Bill strengthens the capacity of the Charities Regulator. We have seen why that has to be the case all too often, unfortunately. Bad practice has cropped up and there is a necessity due to that but in the vast majority of cases, charities are run with good corporate governance in a professional way, often with very few resources. As well as increasing the capacity of the Charities Regulator, we need to increase the capacity of charities to do the work they love doing through legislation and financial support. All TDs in this House work daily with charities in disadvantaged areas, people trying to access homes, women experiencing domestic violence who need refuge and cancer patients who need support. It is across the board. That is why the same themes and issues crop up in contributions around this legislation. The work of cancer services very much supports the State. In some cases, one could argue charities do the work the State should do, directly funded from the Exchequer. That is why they need to be supported and allowed to flourish. It is the same with housing services, urban or rural. There are hard-working charities that represent the Traveller community. I mentioned organisations like the West Cork Women Against Violence Project, an amazing charity that acknowledges the lack of services from the State to support mainly women who experience domestic violence. It is trying its best to provide services, safety, counselling and supports for women in those situations. Arguably, it is work the State should be doing but these groups are out there. I will come back to that point. It is not something we can do in this legislation but there needs to be easier access to funding and a smoother experience when a charitable organisation looks for support from the State so they can access that support and it is not on an ad hocbasis. Unfortunately, that is the case for many of the services.

The Bill references the registration process when a charity originally registers to become a charity. There has to be governance and we must make sure a charity is actually a charity, will be properly run and stacks up in corporate governance. However, in my neck of the woods, for many groups that start up from grassroots level, grow, raise funds and put in place committees and different structures, the next step of registering as a charity becomes quite a big obstacle. I am not saying we should remove all obstacles and let everyone register just with the click of a link on a website, but one must remember that many of these organisations are completely voluntary. They may not have the privilege or comfort of having expert accountants or legal expertise on their board or committee. That creates issues. There is a fantastic charity in west Cork which for the last three or four years has been fighting a battle to build a residential home for adults with autism, which is a big issue in society. Children with autism and intellectual disabilities become adults and the same services and supports are not there that were there previously. This organisation raised thousands through the Kilbrittain Tractor Run, which I believe is the biggest tractor run in Ireland. It has to piggyback on another charitable organisation service user to get funding from the HSE.

When it looked down the path of registering to be a charitable organisation, it found it was far too arduous and would have taken far too long. It did not have the expertise on its board or the supports to do that. It has had to piggyback on another organisation in order to access that funding. When the Department and the Charities Regulator look at a group that is looking to register, they can assess very quickly how authentic a group is and the merits of what it is trying to do so there should be far more assistance with the actual registration. Obviously, there are accounting requirements within a charitable organisation. The experience of the past means this needs to be the case. However, when an organisation is registered as a charity, it relies on volunteers and experts from outside and that whole process needs to be simplified while keeping that same necessity to have corporate governance involved.

I will very quickly come back to the funding part of it. There are far too many unbelievable charitable organisations out there who provide services. I will touch on cancer service for a second. Cancer Connect in west Cork transports thousands of people up to Cork University Hospital for cancer treatment and it is living off scraps from the State in how it funds its organisation going forward. That has to stop. We need to put the organisation on a solid footing. The same is true for ARC Cancer Support House in Cork, which provides counselling services for those who are suffering from cancer or their families. Again, it is living off breadcrumbs. That all needs to stop and the organisation needs to be put on a solid footing.

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