Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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283. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the level of public and State grant aid to an organisation (details supplied) since 2015; the level of projected State support to the end of 2018; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15742/18]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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My Department provided grants totalling €1.95 million to Benefacts in the period 2015 to 2017 and concluded a further funding agreement with Benefacts at the end of last year. Under this agreement a grant of €950,000 was provided for in 2018. This grant was included in the 2018 Estimate for my Department, which was discussed at the Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach on 22 February and will be voted on by the House in the coming weeks.

I understand that other Departments are assessing the potential to provide funding on a smaller scale in 2018. This would include payments to deliver potential pilot data projects and uptake of ‘Benefacts Analytics’. These grant amounts would be subject to the agreement of a business case and the application of public procurement rules for each public body.

The funding agreement between my Department and Benefacts includes the following specific deliverables:

- The maintenance of the database on non-profits

- The public facing website

- The provision of Open Data files

- A data file to the Central Statistics Office and

- A link to the database for Revenue Analysts.

The grant is also given to develop, pilot and test solutions to improve:

- Transparency of the non-profit sector

- Cross-agency access to data and

- The interaction between government and non-profit organisations.