Mary Ann O'Brien (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I also welcome all our guests from the sector. We have just heard from Senator Crown. Like many of my fellow Senators, I come to this debate as someone who has founded a charitable organisation which has in the past received and hopes in the future to receive funds from philanthropy, fundraising, sponsorship and private giving. The sources of moneys referred to have been invaluable funding streams for a sector, involving very ill babies, which does not attract the recognition it warrants or deserves. For this reason I congratulate Senator Mac Conghail and my fellow Independent Senators on bringing this debate to the House.

Just over a month ago I published a report on the urgent need for regulation of the Irish charities sector to reaffirm public trust and confidence. I hope to bring the report before the Seanad with my colleagues in the coming months for discussion. I have shied away from doing this to date because the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Shatter, only last week closed his public consultation phase on the Charities Act 2009. Having had several meetings with the Minister, I am confident he knows the importance of implementing the Charities Act for the future development of the Irish charity and not-for-profit sector. I look forward to us all re-engaging with the Minister in the coming weeks and months as he plots the best way to proceed with the Act. With all due respect to the Minister and while I greatly welcomed his launch of the forum on philanthropy and fundraising, I could not but wonder why the charities regulator was not first put in place. This did not show joined-up thinking by different sectors of the Government.

Senator Mac Conghail correctly points out that there is a severe lack of publicly available information on the sector's financial activities. Some organisations are largely unregulated or unsupervised by virtue of their formation. Voluntary codes of practice exist, but adoption has been very slow. As one can imagine, this poses many difficulties for the sector and the Government is operating in the dark when it comes to public policy and funding for the sector, which benefits nobody. The Government chose to stop funding INKEx which was and still remains the only database of reliable financial information about the not-for-profit and charity sector. That decision was incorrect and represents a major loss to the sector. I ask the Minister to clarify why he stopped INKEx and whether he has any plans to acquire it or re-engage it. In these severely stretched economically challenged times, why did we chose to stop INKEx which collected all the information on 12,000 not-for-profit and charity groups and was beginning to do the joined-up thinking we crucially needed? When I started to look at what INKEx had done, I realised that the Government probably gives in excess of ¤4 billion to the charity and not-for-profit sector. For example, how many autism charities are there in Ireland? How many autism charities are there in Munster or Leinster? We can use this in the arts and can use this regarding children. Maybe there could have been collaboration between charities. We might have found areas of crossover. Statisticians, journalists, the public, donors and those involved in philanthropy need the transparency and clarity that INKEx readily gave us. It will take time to put that back in practice.

The majority of Irish charities and not-for-profit organisations act in an exemplary fashion, being guided by a moral and genuine passion for the cause or activities they undertake. We need to reflect on why so many charities prop up the State in the provision of vital services where the State has been found wanting. I will use the example of the Jack and Jill Children's Foundation, with which I am very familiar. Its purpose is to nurse severely-ill and severely brain-damaged - sometimes palliative - children in their own homes. In his speech the Minister referred to partnership, a point that relates to all charities, including in the areas of arts, education, children and cancer. I challenge the use of the word "partnership". Senator Cullinane will be interested in these straitened times. The Jack and Jill Children's Foundation has raised ¤38 million to date. The Government has given 18% of that money to us. I cannot call 18% a partnership. It is a very welcome donation but cannot be called a partnership.

Senator Crown gave a very good speech and I felt almost jealous because those of us involved in charities and not-for-profit organisations are very competitive. He mentioned the pharmaceutical companies. I wish the Jack and Jill Children's Foundation had that because these are difficult times and we are in competition - I am in competition with Independent Senators for funding. We need partnerships with the Government and we need transparency because we are all desperately passionate about looking after our own areas. As Senator Cullinane said, these are tough times and all we are getting from the Government at the moment are cuts and more cuts.

My desire to assist and reform the regulation if Irish charities is based solely on a love and deeply rooted respect for the sector and the thousands of men and women who work tirelessly to improve the lives of those they encounter. My agenda and that of my fellow Senators is simply to improve public trust and confidence. There is a very real thirst among the public and our donors to see that their taxes and private donations are being spent properly and reflect value. The lack of an operational charities regulator makes Ireland virtually unique in the developed world, something of which we are not proud. Even the creation of a charities regulator will fall short of what would be required to deal with the not-for-profit sector as many not-for-profit organisations are not registered as charities and the charities regulator will have no oversight of not-for-profit organisations.

Many Senators may believe that I have thrown away my green jersey and am damaging this wonderful sector by casting doubt over financial reporting and the practices within the sector in Ireland. That is not my intention - far from it. I merely express the views I have encountered from people working in the sector, accountants, solicitors, corporate sponsors, donors, international observers and funding organisations. I have nearly finished.