Jillian van Turnhout (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I am pleased he is here to deal with this issue of direct relevant to his portfolio. As the Minister will be aware, I raised the issue of a scheme to support national organisations in May 2013 in the hope that we could have a new scheme in place for January 2014. When I again raised the matter in December 2013 I was told the then scheme was to be extended by six months.

This scheme, in terms of the types of organisations involved and how it has evolved, concerns me. When I was involved with the Children's Rights Alliance the scheme was known as the federations and networks scheme. In terms of funding provided over the past three years, the mix and spectrum of organisations has been different. I have raised with the Minister the fact that for some of those organisations such as the Children's Rights Alliance in which, as I stated, I previously worked, State funding is the main source of funding. Other organisations such as the FAI, were contributing 10% of this funding to the salary of their CEOs, which deserves attention.

The real issue for me is the new scheme and the proposed €90,000 cap on funding, which means some of the recipient organisations will be hit by further cuts. Cuts of 12% across the board were announced at the beginning of last week, which is a hugely significantly cut. Many of the organisations who contacted my office were anxious to find out how they would be affected. The scheme was extended in December from January to June 2014. The organisations concerned have only found in mid-February that their funding is to be cut by 12%. Some of them have had to make drastic decisions regarding staff, projects, activities and so on and they still do not know exactly what will happen post-June. It is groundhog day. We have had this situation before. I have been raising this issue in the House since last May. The Minister in one of his responses told me about the evaluation of the scheme that had been undertaken and that this is about enhancing the capacity of the community and voluntary sector, good governance and raising the levels of the organisations but the organisations have been instead left reeling because they are not being given adequate funding. Funding for these organisations has since 2008 been cut by more than 50% across the board. These cuts have not been proportionate or related to the performance or activities of the organisations. Regardless of whether these organisations are doing good work and meeting every objective, or none of them, the same cut applies.

The manner in which this matter has been handled has been extremely unfair to organisations. The organisations about which I am speaking are organisations for whom this State funding is their primary funding and not a top-up fund. They are leveraging funding from philanthropic organisations based on the State funding but are finding this increasingly difficult because the funding from the State continually diminishes. We know that this is all happening against the backdrop of foundations such as Atlantic Philanthropies and the One Foundation winding down their operations here. It is a perfect storm for organisations and this is severely damaging them. I look forward to hearing more about the cap that has been announced.