James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

267. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the private institutions or charities to which his Department or the agencies under the remit of his Department provide financial or other supports; the quantum of such supports for each of the years from 2013 to 2015; the oversight and regulations in place to ensure such expenditure is used for the purposes it was designated for and that the bodies receiving such grant aid are tax compliant and have effective corporate governance systems in place; the reports his Department receives on an annual basis from the organisations so funded; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22342/16]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Details regarding payments from my Department for the years 2013 to 2015, to private institutions and to charities that have been granted charitable tax exemption (under Section 207 of the Taxes Consolidation Act, 1997) are set out in the following table.

Excluded from this list are payments made to schools, teacher education bodies and other education institutions or to bodies representing groups of educational institutions. Cases where the amount of payment made in each year is less than €5,000 have also been excluded.

It has not been possible in the time available to collate the specific funding and accounting arrangements in place between the bodies listed in the table and the Department. However, in general, there would be a number of conditions attached to the receipt of Departmental funding. Such conditionality would generally take the form of requirements to comply with a range of criteria. These would include:

- Evidence of meeting scheme/programme eligibility requirements;

- Reporting of both projected and actual expenditure;

- Providing details of activity levels as well as qualitative assessments of activities or programme impacts;

- Various accounting terms and conditions, including required production of invoices received and paid and outlining services provided, retention of receipts, production of independently audited accounts.

- Tax Compliance as set out in the Department of Expenditure and Reform's Public Financial Procedures (Section C5.6 (i))

If the Deputy wishes to obtain further information regarding any of the bodies listed in the following tables, I will arrange for this information to be provided. In respect of bodies under my Department's aegis, we do not collate details of payments made by them to charities or to private institutions.