Ciarán Cannon (Progressive Democrats)

I welcome the Minister of State who has a serious grasp of the value of the voluntary sector, the challenges facing it and how we should address these. I welcome this opportunity to speak on the important role of volunteerism in the life of our country and how Government can proactively support and encourage the many people who generously give of their time in the service of others. We are now at a time when this most valuable aspect of Irish life needs new life and impetus breathed into it.

There has been a long tradition of volunteerism in this country and this was most apparent to me growing up in rural east Galway in the 1970s where the tradition of the meitheal was still alive and well. A sense of belonging as well as self-sufficiency and reliance were generated when a community helped its own to save the hay, foot the turf and bring in the harvest. I recall summer evenings when people appeared out of nowhere to save the hay. People coming together to help each other in times of difficulty was the beauty of the meitheal. Volunteering, at an informal, non-organisational level, was the key to maintaining and sustaining rural communities while also providing the encouragement to individual farmers to keep going in difficult times. With the increased mechanisation of agriculture, that tradition slowly died out but the spirit of the meitheal is alive and well to this day in rural and urban Ireland.

My belief in the value of volunteerism was further enhanced by my involvement with the Irish Pilgrimage Trust, a national charity caring for young people with special needs. It has grown from a small group of seven volunteers in 1972 to a vibrant national organisation of many thousands of volunteers who give generously of their time and commitment to those who benefit from their support and friendship.

While my experience of volunteerism would lead me to believe it has a bright future, surveys detailing the continued decline in the numbers of those involved in voluntary activity give me serious cause for concern. The most recent of these surveys was conducted by the National Economic and Social Forum in 2002. They found that 17% of all adults questioned were "taking a regular part in any type of unpaid voluntary activity or service outside the home or workplace". Applying this percentage to the adult population as measured by the 2002 census gives us an estimated figure of 492,000. We should compare this with a figure of 926,000 for the year 1992 and we see a decline of 46% in the numbers of those involved in voluntary activity.

There are a number of factors that have led to this decrease and some are not easily addressed by Government. Senator Bradford referred to international research that has shown that increased wealth leads to a decrease in voluntary activity and there is no doubt our Celtic tiger has led to people becoming more self-obsessed and unwilling to get involved in voluntary activity.

Those who are willing to remain involved need to be encouraged and supported in the work they do. In these stringent economic times in which we live, it is necessary to try to advance economic arguments for Exchequer support for the voluntary sector. This argument was successfully made in an excellent document entitled Volunteers and Volunteering in Ireland produced by the Joint Committee on Arts, Sport, Tourism, Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs in January 2005, chaired by our colleague, Senator Cecelia Keaveney. While that report concludes that there are insufficient data available to establish exactly how many volunteers we have in this country, it is possible to estimate that the economic value of their contribution is somewhere in the region of €500 million per annum.

The report also concluded that there is no need to set up another costly quango to foster and nurture volunteerism. The supports provided by Volunteering Ireland and existing volunteering centres should be supported and granted long-term funding as an alternative to an additional layer of bureaucracy in the form of a new statutory body.

I wholeheartedly agree with the conclusion of the report in respect of State funding. It has been my experience in working with a number of voluntary organisations that there is a plethora of ad hoc and multi-agency funding streams available to such groups. I have advocated for a number of years, at local and national government levels, that all funding for voluntary organisations and volunteering should be channelled exclusively through the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs. This would improve efficiency and transparency and make the job of securing funding less difficult for voluntary groups. Funding commitments could be entered into over a number of years and in this way the monitoring of State expenditure would also be facilitated. With a long-term and guaranteed funding stream available to voluntary groups, they would be able to formulate long-term plans rather than working on an intermittent and piecemeal basis dictated by sporadic injections of funding. Creating a single funding stream administered through one Department would also lead to reductions in administration costs and these savings in turn could form part of this single funding stream.

At a time when we are challenged to deliver world-class public services, it is interesting to note that recent research carried out by the University of Wales concluded that using volunteers to deliver some public sector services is good for the nation's health. Senator Norris referred to this earlier when he mentioned philanthropy. The study shows that volunteering can mean people live longer and is good for their health and well-being and for the people they help. It also found that volunteering had a positive effect on people's self-esteem, led to a reduction in hospital visits and could even combat depression, stress and pain. We need to explore further the possibilities of forging strong links between our public service and the voluntary sector. There are potential synergies in it that could benefit us all.

From the citizen training the local under-8 hurling team to the citizen caring for the 80 year old with Alzheimer's disease, the spirit of volunteerism is at the very heart of Irish life. It is a flame of selfless generosity that has burned long and bright for generations and it was apparent to us all when we hosted the Special Olympics in 2003. That event gave us a glimpse of the potential that we have as a people to work together in achieving a common goal. It is now time for Government to acknowledge that potential, to fan that flame in a meaningful way and to offer the kind of supports our people need to continue doing the very valuable work they do.