Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party)
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871. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development her position on the recommendation by an organisation (details supplied) to increase the audit exemption threshold for charities from €250,000 to €500,000 to reduce costs for social enterprises; and if she will take steps to address this financial burden [36692/24]

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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Our charity sector is an important and valued part of Irish society, playing an integral role in the provision of services to our communities. This includes many social enterprises, active across many sectors such as childcare, housing, health, food, tourism, recycling, transportation, and arts and culture.

The Charities Amendment Act 2024 (‘the Act’) revises and updates existing charity legislation, and is a key step to allow for the appropriate regulation, particularly financial regulation, of the sector.

The Act seeks to improve the ability of the Charities Regulator to conduct its statutory functions, providing greater transparency, clarity and fairness in terms of the regulation of charities, leading to greater public trust and confidence in the sector.

Section 18 of the Act increases the financial limit that can be set out in Ministerial regulations in respect of the requirement for charities to conduct an audit. I can confirm that in the regulations to accompany the commencement of this section, the threshold of exemption for charities to conduct an audit will be set at €500,000.

The individual sections of the Act, including section 18, will be commenced in a timely and efficient manner, taking into account the operational impacts on the Charities Regulator and the charity sector respectively.

Separately, I want to highlight the recently launched Trading for Impact: the National Social Enterprise Policy 2024-2027 , which contains a policy objective dedicated to growing and sustaining social enterprise.

This objective focuses on actions that will allow social enterprises to benefit from supports to improve their growth and sustainability. This includes improving access to existing enterprise supports, developing new tailored supports, improving opportunities for access to markets, and improving the capabilities of social enterprises.