Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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173. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the amount of funding issued to a group (details supplied) in each of the years 2015 to 2017 and to date in 2018; the number of contracts his Department has entered into with the group; if his Department is covering a shortfall in funding for the group by virtue of a third party exiting from the funding stream to the group; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22266/18]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform provided grants to Benefacts amounting to €350,000 in 2015, €650,000 in 2016 and €950,000 in 2017 as per the terms of a three year funding agreement.  The Department has provided grants amounting to €407,000 to date in 2018 and expects to issue grants to a total of €950,000 in 2018, as per its current three year funding agreement with Benefacts.  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.

Benefacts is a non-profit social enterprise.  It was established in 2014 with co-funding by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, the Atlantic Philanthropies, and the Ireland Funds, to make the work and funding of the non-profit sector in Ireland more transparent. 

The loss of funds from Atlantic Philanthropies has necessitated an increase in public funds to support the organisation in providing its online database,www.benefacts.ie.This provides free public access to regulatory, financial and governance data about a sector that employs almost 150,000 people, and received in excess of €5.5bn in 2016 in Government funding on a total annual turnover of nearly €12.1bn. The 19,000 organisations in the Benefacts database include all registered charities and thousands of other NGOs, including education institutions, social enterprises and sports and professional bodies.

The grant is provided to Benefacts to support the implementation of their Strategy and Business Plan 2018-2020.  In summary, the activities envisaged in that are:

1. Increase the scope and size of the database.

Potentially doubling the size of the database from 20,000 to 40,000 by including locally based non-profits in partnership with local authorities and assigning these Unique Business Identifiers. Also including political parties in partnership with the Clerk of the Dail and meeting various other requests from public bodies to include non-profits that they deal with.

2. Enhance the quality of the data disclosed and held on the database

Some public bodies have identified additional administrative data that they would like included in the database.

3. Provide the public website, data services and reports

Activities in this area include:

- Maintain, review and develop the website to double its traffic by 2020

- The provision of Open Datasets

- Continue to meet data requests from public bodies and generate small amounts of revenue from non-government sources

- Provide a restricted version of Benefacts Analytics to non-government users and generate small levels of income

- Produce the Benefacts’ Sector Analysis Report annually.

4. Support the Government’s ICT policies

Activities here relate principally to the roll-out of Benefacts Analytics, a new web-based service to provide grant makers with governance, risk and compliance information more efficiently, supporting the National Data Infrastructure project by assigning Unique Business Identifiers and potentially developing an online financial data filing platform.

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 local customisation 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.