Eamonn Coghlan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister said, he met Mr. Jonathan Irwin long before he met Senator Mary Ann O’Brien. I met Mr. Irwin when he came to Crumlin when young Jack was a patient there and was appalled by the services available then. Fair play to Mr. Irwin for establishing the Jack & Jill Foundation afterwards.

Having worked with thousands of volunteers raising funds through golf matches, cycling events, marathons and triathlons in the corporate sector and through schools and community groups, I know we spent a lot of time policing what was happening in the area. People would come to us proposing that they sell clothes in the name of Crumlin hospital. We even had a company propose selling tyres while using the name of the hospital as a benefit to itself. We found that only 10% of the funds raised in parachute jumps were going to the charity. We had to get rid of those organising it and tell them they were not welcome. We even had farmers with a fund-raising idea of splitting up a field into a grid and running a sweep on guessing where the cow’s call of nature would land. One can guess where we told them to go.

It is not the staff in our fundraising office who get the credit but the volunteers. It was the volunteers who built the new medical tower at the hospital for €15 million. It was the volunteers who provided life-saving equipment for the children. To this day, it is the volunteers who support the world-renowned research that goes on at the research centre. Up to 120,000 children go through the hospital every year. While we wait for the new paediatric hospital to be built, which will probably take 20 years, we still need to fix Crumlin. Accordingly, we badly need the support of the voluntary sector to do that.

The Charities Act was signed into law in 2009 but it has not yet been enacted and only some sections have commenced. This is a shame, as the debate on this sector has been going on for ten years. We have heard that up to 7,000 charities are registered. From my information, however, there are 17,000 charities operating. It is becoming exceptionally difficult to control the well-intentioned individuals and groups who want to raise funds. They feel they can just set up shop and go about raising funds without any rules, regulations or guidelines.

The Children’s Medical and Research Foundation in Crumlin is the leading charity in Ireland. First, everyone knows its brand. There is not a family or a household who do not know some child who has attended the hospital. Second, it has implemented corporate governance and compliance for 40 years. As Senator Mac Conghail and the Minister stated, people trust the charity work done by Crumlin. The strong board and leadership, with volunteer businessmen and women from industry and the medical field, ensure that everything is transparent and in order.

I welcome the first corporate governance code for community, voluntary and charitable organisations, launched last June by the Ombudsman, Ms Emily O’Reilly. However, it is not mandatory and it is disappointing to note that not many organisations have adopted it to date. At the launch, Ms O’Reilly stated: "Good governance is not some sort of mildly irritating optional extra in the conduct of our public affairs but is rather the pivot around which everything turns and which ultimately determines the success or failure of our enterprises." This includes charitable organisations. Unfortunately, it is the fly-by-night organisations, the bogus individuals purportedly collecting for good causes which bring down the reputation and good name of genuine charitable organisations, damaging the trust enjoyed by them. This can be only be stopped by establishing the charities regulatory authority. It was indicated earlier that lack of funding is the main reason it has not yet been set up. We cannot use this as an excuse. The authority must be up and running soon. While the Minister said it will be in time, time is running out. We owe it to the volunteers, donors and beneficiaries to have this sector regulated.