Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I commend my colleague, Senator Mac Conghail, for his work in the arts and for tabling the motion. I also commend all of the Senators who are involved in the not-for-profit sector. The House is blessed to have such a range of people. I welcome the people who are seated in the Visitors Gallery who are involved in the arts.

As we all know, Ireland has a great international reputation for giving, and 89% of adults in Ireland give to charity every year. By comparison, 58% of adults in England and 40% in Germany give money to charity on an annual basis. Only 0.1% of the top 500 businesses in Ireland donate part of their profits to charity but in England it is 1.2%. In the USA a staggering 2% of national product goes towards the charity sector which is nearly $300 billion but in Ireland it is 0.7%. That leads me to conclude that it is not that Irish people do not want to give, but that the mechanisms and systems fail in their giving.

The Forum on Philanthropy made four key recommendations as follows: establish a national giving campaign; improve the fiscal environment and the infrastructure for giving which I shall return to later; develop a fund-raising capacity among not-for-profits; and create a national social innovation fund. The key recommendation is the second one. The budget must take account of how people and companies can give properly. If these structures were put in place and philanthropy was taken seriously in the last budget then we would not have seen a decline in the number of organisations that are involved in philanthropy, and Atlantic Philanthropies will leave Ireland this year. The Government must fill the gap and create a system where a one-off individual like Chuck Feeney, who is unique in the world, has such a love for Ireland that he became involved. The structures for his giving are not optimal and the Government has not tackled it in a budgetary way, particularly in the Finance Act, to make it easier for people to give, thus allowing people to be more generous, especially when it comes to legacies, which is the norm in the United States and hence the reason that a figure of $300 billion was given to charity.

However, nine out of every ten adults in Ireland donate money every year to charity. They do so burdened by tax, a system that is not as generous as it should or could be. This leads me to my next question. The key recommendation by the Forum on Philanthropy was on the budget. There is no need for a giving campaign because Irish people already give generously compared with everyone else in Europe. We tend to give in response to a crisis and emergencies. That is because, in our heart of hearts, we know what that is like as a nation. Donating should be more sustained and structured. People should be allowed to donate from their estates and to give annually from their wages. Donating should not be the burden that it currently is due to the Government's tax regime and limits on philanthropy.

The American Ireland Fund, founded by the former United States ambassador to Ireland, Mr. Dan Rooney, will be the only large philanthropic organisation left in the State. The Government has not taken serious action to tackle the situation.