Written answers

Tuesday, 17 May 2016

Department of Justice and Equality

Charities Regulation

Photo of Stephen DonnellyStephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Social Democrats)
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82. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the status of the operation of the Charities Regulatory Authority, including the number of applicants awaiting registration; the average length of time a charity is waiting between submitting an application and the issuing of a registered charity number; and the number of staff within the authority assigned to approving applications. [9443/16]

Photo of Frances FitzgeraldFrances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I can inform the Deputy that, the Charities Regulatory Authority (the 'Charities Regulator') was established in October 2014 to regulate all charitable organisations operating in Ireland as provided for in the Charities Act 2009. The Authority currently has some 23 staff, however with provision of an increased budget in 2016 this number will increase to 36 in the coming months. The key areas of work of the Regulator include registration and award of charitable status, annual reporting, compliance and investigations, charity services (formerly under the Office of the Commissioners for Charitable Donations and Bequests) and providing a public register and statistical information on the charity sector.

The deadline for organisations to apply for charitable status was 16 April 2016 and a significant spike in applications were received. The Regulator is currently processing over 4,500 applications of which 3,600 are from schools through a bulk registration system. Applications are currently being processed by a team of 7 staff of which 3 are case officers who are responsible for making decisions to award charitable status. Additional staffing will, however, provide for a doubling of case officers dealing with registration. Processing times for charitable status is currently 6 to 9 months. This is partly due to the fact that since many organisations are engaging in the registration process for the first time, a significant number of applications are incomplete and must be queried for additional information. However the Regulator assures me that this processing time will reduce quickly. The immediate priority will be to process new organisation applications (i.e. applications in respect of new charities established after 16 October 2014) as such organisations are significantly constrained in their operations prior to any decision by the Regulator to award charitable status.

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