Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I speak fairly often in this Chamber. There are a lot of things on which I would not be well versed but certainly when it comes to the community voluntary sector, that is the sector from which I came and which got me elected to Dáil Éireann so I speak with some level of expertise. I am part of 25 community voluntary groups for a number of years and they have delivered. The sad thing about the Charities Regulator is that there are many groups that have just raised a bit of local money. It might be the Tidy Towns, something from Meals on Wheels or a small thing and now they are regulated to the very last; some of them to the point that they have had to step aside and walk away. I am not saying that regulation is not important. Certainly, regulation should be in place for voluntary or charitable organisations which get funding from the State. However, when people - community voluntary people who, in many cases, are elderly - get letters, they walk away and the organisation collapses. This is what happened during the week when I got a phone call from a group in west Cork who got one of those letters stating that the group had to have its accounts in order or whatever. It had a few quid collected for years. It did a little bit of Tidy Towns work and bought a few flowers when the time came, as well as other little bits. It won a Tidy Towns award. It was a little development association and its members were happy out. They said they would disband and collapse and hand the money that was left to another charitable organisation locally, which is very wrong because they had done no wrong. They had collected no money from the State and the bit of money they collected was honestly given by the local people and happily given back to the local people. The fact is, that is gone and that is after happening in a lot of places.

I would like to ask the Charities Regulator to clarify something. There are organisations that are after collapsing, especially during Covid. There could be tens of thousands of euro gone back into the system. Where did that money go to? Did it go back to the community where the money was taken out of? The organisation could be local. It could be in west Cork, or wherever. It could have had €5,000 in an account, or €55,000. Where did that money end up? It would be very unfair if that was not clarified. We need to know that.

The charity sector has faced several problems recently. Some charities like the Peter McVerry Trust, the Transgender Equality Network Ireland, TENI, ChildFund Ireland, Bóthar and Console have had issues that led to investigations. These problems have hurt the reputation of the charity sector over the past seven years. For example, the ability of a controversial transgender group to retain State funding despite persistent failures to submit accounts and other governance and compliance issues should raise serious questions about the decision-making around the disbursal of taxpayers' money. The Transgender Equality Network Ireland has managed to retain its generous grant funding from the HSE. That is from hard-pressed taxpayers, despite failing to produce audited financial accounts for three years in a row. In 2019, it managed to pull some €470,000 into its pot, with most of that coming from the taxpayer through various sources including the HSE, the Dormant Accounts Fund and through Rethink Ireland etc. In 2021, its income was almost €508,000, again with the most of it coming from public funds. Most of that money was used to fund salaries, yet it was unable to produce audited accounts to the HSE for some reason. Despite TENI's grave financial failings, it has been given extraordinary leeway by Government and the HSE.

Bad actors within the sector mean that all charities have seen a decrease in their income, and one in three charities reported a drop in income due to these scandals. There is a real possibility of a contagion effect from these issues, which could impact public trust. People are concerned about how charities use their money, especially with regard to the high salaries of senior staff. The chief executive of the regulator has advised that not every charity needs a CEO, especially not one who is paid a high salary before any fundraising has been done. She also raised concerns about charities where the CEO is the only employee or one of only two employees. People want to know how their donations are used and what the charity has achieved. Clear information on these areas would increase trust and confidence.

Media reports have highlighted issues with governance and public trust. There was a 13% increase in the number of concerns about charities reported by the public in 2022. Many charities failed to meet their obligations on the governance standards last year, with 41% failing to file their annual finances and activities on time. The chief executive of the regulatory authority has said it is disappointing to see so many charities missing deadlines to submit annual reports about their finances. She said there is a clear link between public trust in the charity sector and transparency and accountability within the sector. However, The Wheel, the national association of charities, community groups and social enterprises, has said that there are resource issues in achieving compliance with the governance process. It argues that the State has invested in developing regulation and compliance processes for the sector but it has not invested in supporting the capacity of charities to comply within these processes.

The Charities Regulator was established in 2014, and is responsible for regulating charitable organisations and protecting charitable assets. It maintains a register of charities, which includes all charities operating in the State. It has a mission to regulate the charity sector in the public interest, ensure compliance with law and support best practice in governance, management and administration. As I said earlier, the issue we have here, especially with organisations like Meals On Wheels, community councils, community carers and community alerts, is that they are all organisations run by volunteers. It does not matter what age they are; they are still volunteers who are giving of their time free. They are meeting with all this regulation, and what is happening is that they are walking away. I know the Minister of State will ask where do we find a fine line here. We certainly have to understand that the majority of community and voluntary work being done out there is being done by volunteers who maybe do not have the expertise to sit down and spend days trawling through paperwork. They basically hand in the bill, pay the cheque for the little bit that was bought so they can put the Meals on Wheels on the table for all the people out there. What we are expecting of them with regard to charities regulation is that they will all be teams of professionals. It is not going to happen, so what we are seeing is a run from organisations of genuinely brilliant people who stepped up to the mark for 20, 30 or 40 years, and who are willing to do it with their bare hands and bare feet. The State does not recognise that, and good God, if anything happens to them, the State will collapse because they are in many ways running our country. I know Cancer Connect in west Cork. Imagine, they sit into their cars, drive up and all that. Some of them may have resources if they link up to another group. However, what is happening is we are starting to lose community and voluntary organisations left, right and centre because we are over-regulated.

Again, I fully understand that if they are getting State money, they certainly have to be accountable. A lot of them certainly are. I look at people who have done some huge work down through the years and have been treated horribly. I have to name one today, and I asked him if I could name him so that I would not in any way damage his reputation. I will not in this case. He is Tony Wilkinson. Tony has been to the Dáil here several times representing Parkinson's Ireland and he is an astonishingly great man. I know it for a fact. I have no reason to praise him above anybody else in this country but the facts are, people were ringing Tony from all over the country because they had Parkinson's. They needed help, and Tony looked outside the box sometimes to get that help for them, and he looked from within the box. However, Parkinson's Ireland decided to get rid of him. It is astonishing.

I am a member of Parkinson's Ireland, so I am well able and within my rights to talk about it. I attended meetings - stormy meetings. There is no Parkinson's Ireland branch in Cork at this present time. There is no functioning branch. There has been no AGM. Parkinson's Ireland is getting State money. It certainly has to be answerable, not the community alert or the community council trying to do a little bit of cleaning around the village while getting no State money. However, Parkinson's Ireland has to be. When we have somebody like Tony, his wife Kate and others, it is totally dependent on the work he did. Then, someone up along the line decided he was stepping on their toes and to get rid of him because he was one step ahead of them. He was delivering on their magazine and on information. There was never a call made that he did not respond to. The problem was, I personally was getting him to respond to other politicians who would talk to me about Parkinson's. I would say to them that this man will explain what could be done. He was an astonishingly outstanding man, and I am very disappointed that Parkinson's Ireland has decided, in its wisdom, to get rid of him, and decided to call an AGM in Cork in September 2023 that never took place. It is now going to get State funding. It has to be called before the health committee and before any regulatory body to explain itself in total. Why is there a situation that we, and I as a member, have no functioning Cork branch at this present time?

It is hard to point the finger at one bad issue because there are so many voluntary organisations I would like to speak about here. I could go on for hours because I was brought up in that sector. I am very passionate. A close family member of mine was at the early stages of Parkinson's and it kind of stuck with me. When the opportunity came to help, I decided to go on and be involved in an organisation that Tony Wilkinson was involved in, and for which he had delivered so much. I am extremely disappointed, and I urge the Minister of State that this is an urgent issue that needs to be resolved. I will be taking the matter up further. It is not just for Tony. It is for all the sufferers of Parkinson's out there who are finding it difficult. Sometimes they need help, and sometimes there is a need to look outside the box.

Getting back to the local groups, it is the local groups I represent in here mainly, not those who get funding. I have no issue with bigger organisations. They have to get funding but the local groups have delivered time and time again in their local communities. We need to make sure that there is a mechanism that protects those groups in this Bill. If they are not protected, and if it is a one-size-fits-all solution here, it is going to lead to the decimation of voluntary organisations in local communities. Whether they are in Bandon, Clonakilty, Schull or wherever, or Goleen and Castletownbere, they are delivering continuously on the ground. They are out every night.

In some cases, it is the same people involved in the different groups. If somebody is good at something, he or she will be asked to participate. However, those people definitely cannot take the workload that is being asked of them. They speak to me about it quite a lot. I mentioned the person from a particular group who rang me the other day and said, that is it. The people in the group cannot do it any longer. I took the letter they sent me to an accountant, who said their accounts would have to be audited. They replied that they probably only process two cheques a year. There is money in their account but the accountant said he was sorry but the letter says it must be done and that is it.

Another issue is that new, genuine community voluntary groups cannot obtain charitable status. Surely to God there is a system whereby groups can obtain that status. Kilbrittain autism centre is an organisation that has contacted me often looking for that. It has collected tens of thousands of euro and wants to be a charitable organisation. However, no matter what angle it has come at the issue from, it has been refused. What are we about here? Are we clearly stating that we do not want new community voluntary groups coming on board that will be strong and will deliver, or have already delivered and want to continue to deliver, for areas all over the country? Are we saying that, in future, we will not allow those organisations to become charitable organisations? It should not be acceptable for any process in this country to take more than two to three months. We are talking about volunteers who are working hard in their communities. They are trying to use the funds they have to pay someone to do something for them. What is happening is astonishing and it is not good enough.

I hope the Minister of State does not think I am in any way attacking anything he is doing. He is very helpful to me whenever I approach him. However, he must look into this issue as part of the provisions of this Bill. If a genuine organisation wants to set up, it must be allowed to do so, once it has completed its paperwork, within a month or six weeks, no questions asked. It should not take 12 months or two years, with all these fences put before people. It just will not work that way. We are pushing more and more people away from the voluntary sector instead of encouraging them. The more they do, the less the State has to do.

I know rural social workers in west Cork who work with community voluntary groups. I am involved in a community council in Goleen. At one time, we had 17 workers through the different schemes. It was a like a factory going in that small village. At the same time, however, none of those involved was any great expert at doing paperwork. I remember someone from Pobal coming down to inspect us one time and, God almighty, it was insane what that man wanted. He upset our brilliant, top-class treasurer, who was a local person doing the job voluntarily. The Pobal man looked for so much paperwork that the treasurer said to me she was finished. She said, "Take my books and go away", and that was the end of it. That is no way to treat people. It is okay if people are well paid but we are talking about volunteers. The man from Pobal was not looking for so much in the grand scheme of things but he made it bloody difficult for us to deliver. I do not know who paid him but he spent two days trying to hoover through our bookwork.

The point I am making is that this is not what the Goleen community council, with its 17 members, was set up to do. It was set up to provide jobs. Our job was to deliver for the community. We built a community centre through volunteers collecting money. We built a community pitch. We did more in Goleen than people in County Kildare told me they had themselves. We did that in west Cork and the pitch is still being used today. Sadly, the population is small but that is a battle for another day. There is a gentleman there at the moment trawling over paperwork the whole time and trying to keep everything under control. He is an ordinary person. He is not an accountant or a professional of any kind, except perhaps a professional at manning his farm. We have to be very careful that we do not overly regulate things and put off people who are delivering locally. As I said, the Goleen community council had 17 people working in that rural community under the rural social scheme, the community employment scheme, HSE schemes and the community services programme. I could name all the schemes one after the other. We had three workers here, two workers there and four over there. They were great and we still have 11 or 12 of them. They delivered for the community by strimming the grass in the graveyards, keeping the streets clean and, when we had no local authority workers, they maintained the pitch and kept the community centre and meals on wheels service going. That is just a fraction of what was going on.

We must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. If things become overly regulated, there is a problem. I mentioned Parkinson's Ireland. There are a lot of genuine organisations out there but we are looking to regulate them too tightly. We are throwing all the voluntary community alert schemes, community councils, community carers and business associations under the one umbrella where they do not fit. These people are not getting paid. I never see anybody in my community council, or the community alert scheme and the two community care schemes in which I am involved, getting a brown cent for the work they do. We are regulating them so much that some of them are walking away. As I said, one person did that last week. We are overly regulating things for ordinary, small community voluntary groups.

I urge the Minister of State to give time and thought to this issue. He has such organisations in his constituency, the same as I have them in mine. They have delivered for communities, handing out meals on wheels to people living on their own, visiting people and putting in pendant alarms for them. I have to mention two people who died recently in west Cork. Denis O'Neill and Pat McCarthy delivered diligently to their community. Alan Finn in Schull is another. They were three great community volunteers who unfortunately passed away within a short time of each other. They never looked for a brown cent for all they did for people in their communities. They wanted to do it for the good of the community. They saw the community centre and pitch built and the 12 new houses in Schull. Their organisations built those facilities. They did not touch any funds other than working with the bodies that are out there to deliver for the community. People like them will walk away at some stage if we pressurise them any more. The bigger charitable groups with CEOs have the finances and know-how to do the figures. We must spare a serious thought for the ordinary community voluntary organisations.

Under the current charities regulation regime, organisations have collapsed, including some in my constituency. I would like to know where that money goes and who has the authority to spend it. I will be told it is a matter for the Charities Regulator. My argument is that, surely be to God, if an organisation has €20,000 and the elderly people who volunteer in it are giving up and walking away, that €20,000 should be distributed back into the community in grants or some other way, not taken away and handed out to whomever. If an organisation based in Dublin closes, I would not expect its funding to come to west Cork, or vice versa. I know of organisations that have collapsed and their moneys have been taken back. They are left with zero funds and zero delivery for those communities.

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