David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after ??Seanad Éireann?? and substitute the following:"Welcomes:

? a national debate on the current context and challenges facing the not-for-profit sector with regards to philanthropy, fund-raising, sponsorship and private giving in Ireland;

notes

? the publication in May 2012 under the auspices of the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government of the Report of the Forum on Philanthropy and Fundraising;
? according to the Irish Non-Profits Knowledge Exchange the not-for-profit sector in Ireland employs over 100,000 people across the community, voluntary, sporting and cultural sector and a pay cost of ¤3.5 billion;
? 32% of the not-for-profit sector in the Irish Non-Profit Database are unincorporated, which means that pending the commencement of the Charities Act, we have no regulatory source of financial information about them;
? with concern that there is no centralised register available on the level of State funding given to the not-for-profit sector;
? recognises that the community sector is estimated to be worth ¤6.5 billion to the Irish economy, three times the size of the State?s investment, proving that the community and voluntary sector is a cost-effective medium for the provision of many vital services;
? notes that the cut to funding in the community and voluntary services is entirely disproportionate to the level of cutbacks across the Exchequer;
? notes that the delivery costs of many of the services currently provided by this sector would be substantially greater if Government Departments, the HSE, or private companies were to deliver the same level of service directly;
? notes that the community and voluntary sector provides essential services which the State and private sectors are unwilling or unable to provide, and that the services they provide are cost-effective, and has a key preventative function;
? acknowledges that it is unacceptable for the State to abdicate its own responsibility for the delivery of vital services to the community and voluntary sector without providing adequate support and long-term security of funding;
? condemns the hollowing out of genuine community development by abolishing voluntary boards of management and placing control under partnership programmes which undermines local democracy and the bottom-up approach upon which community development is based;
? notes that the programme for Government states ?We will work with stakeholders in the Arts Community to develop proposals aimed at building support of the Arts in Ireland exploring philanthropic, sponsorship or endowment fund opportunities.? (Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht);
? notes there is a dearth of accurate and robust data on which to base public policy in this area;
? notes that the declining public funding environment and the exiting of two major foundations from Ireland (One Foundation and Atlantic Philanthropies) puts the sustainability of the sector in doubt;
? recognises that while the value of philanthropy is obvious, that it cannot act as an effective substitute for essential services, funded by the Exchequer;
? notes that approximately 20% of the national lottery fund goes to arts and heritage funding, with 19.4% going to sports and 36% going to community organisations.

Welcomes:

? the initiatives within the voluntary, community and the arts sector across public and private organisations to build on capacity and leveraging for fund-raising, in particular:

- The Philanthropy Leverage Initiative by the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht;
- Pilot Raise Scheme by the Arts Council;
- New Stream by Business to Arts;

? the work of both Philanthropy Ireland and Fundraising Ireland in supporting training and capacity building across the community and voluntary sectors;
? welcomes the proposal in the Finance Bill 2013 to simplify the tax incentive for charity donations;
? calls on the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government to update the Seanad on the progress of the recommendations of the Report of the Forum on Philanthropy and Fundraising;

calls upon the Government to:

? reverse the cuts in funding to the community and voluntary sector and move towards multi-annual funding in order to allow organisations to plan ahead and end the practice of funding bodies requiring the production of detailed business plans before giving any indication of the size of the budget available for the year in question;
? ring-fence ¤50 million per year from the dormant accounts fund for the community and voluntary sector, ring-fence moneys seized by the Criminal Assets Bureau, CAB, for community development and community-based drug projects;
? reconceptualise and extend the community employment, CE, scheme, and increasing the number of CE places available;
? outline the impact of the departure of key philanthropic organisations such as Atlantic Philanthropies and One Foundation;
? implement the Labour Court recommendations and furthermore, to allow community and voluntary sector workers to negotiate their pay and conditions on a collective basis by introducing a mechanism involving Departments, employers and workers which establishes the right to collective bargaining; and
? establish an All-Ireland Consultative Civic Forum promised by the Good Friday Agreement, which would enable communities to engage with others across civic society and across the country and share information, learning and best practice on an All-Ireland basis.".

The motion is reasonable and I commend the Independent Taoiseach's nominee Senators on tabling it. It has much to commend it. It is, however, a weak motion that does not truly call upon the Government to take real action. I understand why Senators tabled such a motion: to get support from the Government, which makes sense. As someone who worked in the community and voluntary sector, however, I know at first hand the devastating impact of the cuts that have been inflicted on many of those groups over recent years and the effect they have had on the groups' ability to deliver services and programmes. On that basis, the motion does not offer those groups and others in the sector any real justice in that it does not hold the Government to account.

We cannot have a debate on a subject like this without being frank about the matter. The community and voluntary sector is at crisis point. The decline will be irreversible if action is not taken now. The good work that has been done in communities over the last 20 years or more will be lost. We are tabling this amendment on that basis.

A number of key points must be made about the community and voluntary sectors and about the philanthropy and funding sectors. In acknowledging the excellent work they do, we should recognise that they are forced to do certain work because the Government is unable and often unwilling to undertake such work. This is a key point. Successive Governments have been perfectly happy to reduce their involvement in various sectors and allow the slack to be taken up by community and voluntary bodies. The same goes to an even greater extent for local government. I discussed this with the Minister responsible in a separate debate some months ago. When communities are suffering because of cutbacks, the community and voluntary sector is being asked to step into the breach and provide services previously provided by local authorities or State agencies. It is important these organisations and community fora are supported but they are taken for granted because the Government knows many of the people who work in these bodies will serve their communities regardless of whether they are paid. Therefore, the Government is perfectly happy to make substantial cuts to the budget for the community and voluntary sector. Most groups working in the community, voluntary and youth sectors in the past five years have seen cuts between 30% and 40%.

As the amendment notes, the cuts have been utterly disproportionate, far greater than the cutbacks in other areas, but the Government is mistaken if it believes these cuts will not do any serious damage to communities and community development. We have already lost many valuable and useful bodies and the viability of many more have been called into question. There is not a Senator in this House who is not in touch with his local community and development companies and voluntary organisations, many of which are surviving day to day and week to week. Many of those projects are at crisis point because of a lack of funding. That is the reality for many working in the sector.

This is not about protecting jobs in the sector. I am talking about protecting the bodies themselves and the work that is being done. Increasingly, responsibility is being pushed onto volunteers. I will give an example from Waterford. The Waterford City Community Forum is made up of 220 community and voluntary organisations but is struggling to maintain funding. One would think an organisation that acts as an umbrella group for 220 organisations would receive significant funding. The funding for 2010 was ¤24,000 and this year it was ¤11,000. A part-time worker doing less than half a working week is all the community forum has to survive but funding is still being cut. How much more can it take before it can no longer exist? I call on the Minister to restore the funding to community fora throughout the State to pre-2010 levels. This is one of a number of fora across the State that provide a valuable service in bringing together a range of community and voluntary organisations, and there are many more similar examples.

I have raised the need for multi-annual finance and budgeting. The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government said he supports this, which I welcomed when we discussed this last year. He told me he would look at that idea as it was good practice, better than annual funding streams which have a lack of certainty. If there is multi-annual budgeting, the groups know three to five years in advance what their budgets will be and can plan service provision accordingly. It makes perfect sense and I hope we can get to that point at some stage.

Certain revenue streams will be drying up in the future. Considering the recommendations of the report of the Forum on Philanthropy and Fundraising, the bodies referred to have contributed significantly to Irish life. Of that there is no doubt whatsoever. The One Foundation has a unique and interesting philosophy with its own prescribed shelf life where it aims to wrap up in ten years. Its work varies substantially, taking in sectors such as youth mental health and integration. Its outlay so far is ¤72 million, a considerable sum.

The foundation has done a great deal of work in many different sectors, including supporting young people from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, LGBT, community. Atlantic Philanthropies has also done much work in this regard.

All the philanthropic organisations are important and I welcome any decision by the wealthy in society to invest in the community or voluntary sector. However, the best way to ensure sufficient money is available to provide the services communities need is to tax wealth more through specific wealth taxes or increases in taxes within a progressive taxation system. This is the direction in which we should move, rather than depending on a small number of people with money to be so good as to give some of their money back to communities. Fair play to those who do so but the most sustainable approach is to have a proper, progressive taxation system that ensures we have sufficient money to provide the services people deserve to have as of right.

I commend the Independent Senators again on tabling the motion. In pressing the amendment, albeit not to a vote, I acknowledge the reason the motion was presented in its current form. Unfortunately, however, Sinn Féin cannot support it.