I welcome Mr. Matthew Hamilton and Ms Deirdre Garvey. I remind the visitors that while comments of members are protected by parliamentary privilege, those of visitors are not so protected. I invite Ms Garvey and Mr.Hamilton to make their presentation.
Presentation by The Wheel.
Ms Garvey
I thank the committee for allowing us the opportunity to make a presentation. I will give a brief summary of the points we have made regarding the amendment of the Freedom of Information Act 1997. Subsequently I will go into those points in more detail with my colleague, Mr. Matthew Hamilton. The Wheel has three main concerns and also three main recommendations to which we want to draw attention.
As I am aware that I am addressing a room full of people who had probably not heard of The Wheel up until recently, if at all, I will explain a little about the organisation. Neither myself nor Matthew are legal experts in the way that the two previous speakers are. Our points on the amendment of the Act are really restricted to general points of principle regarding how it affects community and voluntary organisations and, through those organisations, ordinary citizens.
The Wheel is a registered charity. It is a resource centre and advocate for Irish community and voluntary organisations. The Wheel serves more than 3,700 groups in every county in the Republic of Ireland. It was founded in 1999. Among many information and networking resources we provide to these organisations and individuals, one of our major programmes of work is big picture development or assisting the development of the relationship between the State and the community and voluntary sector.
It is our view that the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill, if passed into law as originally published in February 2003, would significantly damage that relationship between the State and the community and voluntary sector. This would be to the detriment of Government, citizens and citizens' organisations.
The Wheel has three specific concerns. First, the Bill materially undermines existing Government policy for relationships between the State and the community and voluntary sector, namely the White Paper on a Framework for Supporting Voluntary Activity and for Developing the Relationship between the State and the Community and the Voluntary Sector of September 2000. This White Paper took many years to develop. It has won substantial backing from across the community and voluntary sector and has significant benefits for Government, which, as recently as last October, publicly re-affirmed its commitment to it as Government policy.
Our second specific concern relates to prescribing a fee for a request for information, as proposed in section 26. This would reduce community and voluntary organisations' capacity for both advocacy and service delivery. Using price as a rationing mechanism will mean that fewer community and voluntary organisations will access information. The charge essentially represents a tax on civic action that will result in a transfer of funds from an already under funded community and voluntary sector to the State. By actively seeking to deter citizen action, this Bill seeks to curtail the legitimate democratic rights of citizens. It is particularly troubling that access to information about local or national services that vindicate one's rights as a citizen should be subject to a blanket fee, as this will primarily deter the poor. This is a significant step back from the current situation as it formalises a separation between the quality of citizenship for the rich and that for the poor.
The third concern in our outline summary is that the addition of categories of exemption to the Freedom of Information Act erodes the rights of citizens and citizens' groups to engage fully in the democratic governance of this country. As a general principle, denial of access to a record should be based on a specific harm to an individual, as Ms Reidy went into in more detail earlier, or the public interest that would arise from the release of that record.
In light of these concerns which we will go into in more detail, The Wheel has three recommendations: first, that the Bill not be enacted in its current form and that a wide-ranging review, with full consultation with user groups including community and voluntary organisations, be conducted before the existing Act is amended; second, that no additional fees be added to those already allowed for in the Freedom of Information Act 1997 and third, that there should be no addition to the categories of exemption in the Freedom of Information Act 1997.
The Wheel was established in 1999 to serve as a resource centre, support agency and advocate for Irish community and voluntary organisations. It was founded by upwards of 60 groups who came together at the end of 1998 and the beginning of 1999. It is a registered charity. Since the beginning of 1999, The Wheel has grown rapidly. We employ seven staff and serve more than 3,700 organisations throughout Ireland. The Wheel is independent of Government or any political or religious organisation and, most importantly, is open to every community and voluntary organisation in the country.
The participants in The Wheel elect the core group or board of directors which determines policy and the participants are continually consulted as to how The Wheel should develop to better meet their needs. This is a truly bottom-up governed organisation.
Unlike our counterparts in other territories, for example, the Northern Ireland Council For Voluntary Action, we do not yet receive ongoing funding from the State. We hope that might change in the future. Although we have received one-off State grants, the bulk of our funding to date has been gifts from private individuals, companies and trusts. Among others, we have been fortunate to receive support from The Smurfit Foundation, Esat and The Atlantic Philanthropies, in addition to once-off grant funding from the State.
The Wheel aims to increase the power and capacity of community and voluntary organisations to improve society. Central to its work is a programme to help foster a better relationship between the State and the community and voluntary sector. We keep our database of almost 6,000 individuals across the sector informed about key developments in that relationship and, importantly, we provide the secretariat to the community and voluntary representatives on the Implementation and Advisory Group for the Government's September 2000 White Paper on Supporting Voluntary Activity.
I will go into a little more detail about the first of our concerns, namely that the Bill materially undermines existing Government policy for relationships between the State and the community and voluntary sector. The OECD report Citizens As Partners points out that "Information is the basis for all strengthening of government-citizen relations." The Wheel is therefore extremely concerned that the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill would substantially undermine the White Paper on Supporting Voluntary Activity, which is the Government's existing policy on how it plans to develop its relationship with the community and voluntary sector.
In that White Paper, the Government acknowledged that "there is a need to create a participatory democracy where active citizenship is the norm." It went on to state that voluntary activity "is a vital element of democracy" and that "a strong democracy enhances and protects the capacity of citizens to participate." Furthermore, the White Paper states that "in the Government's vision of society, the ability of the community and voluntary sector to provide channels for the active involvement and participation of citizens is fundamental."
A core principle of the White Paper is openness and accountability in the relationship between the State and the community and voluntary sector and a commitment to "provide access to, and to share, information relevant to the pursuit of shared objectives." The White Paper specifically refers to the 1997 Freedom of Information Act as evidence that "the Government is committed to bringing about greater openness, accountability and transparency to our system of public administration."
However, by significantly curtailing Irish citizens' access to information, the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill will directly undermine the Government's desire to "create a more participatory democracy where active citizenship is fostered", as expressed in the White Paper. This is for a number of reasons, most notable of which is that introducing a prescribed fee, as proposed in section 26, for information requests will deter individual citizen engagement with policy-making and therefore directly disadvantage poorer citizens and citizens' groups. Under this proposal, the quality of one's citizenship and capacity to participate will be more directly linked to income than is currently the case. This is directly in conflict with the White Paper's commitments to "focus on the needs of the most disadvantaged," to "achieving equality of opportunity, access and treatment" and to ensuring that individuals and communities are "facilitated to speak about the problems affecting them and be part of the practical response."
The second implication of rationing inquiries from citizens by means of a prescribed fee is that these citizens represent some form of burdensome nuisance, not a resource to be valued. This undermines the White Paper's statement that "the Government is committed to encouraging individual volunteering," its acknowledgement of the role of the community and voluntary sector in "inputting to policy-making" and its stated position that the State and the community and voluntary sector "each recognise their mutual right to constructively critique each other's actions and policies."
My colleague, Matthew Hamilton, will go through the second and third observations and concerns of The Wheel.
Mr. Hamilton
I thank the committee for this opportunity to voice some of our concerns. The Wheel's second concern is that, in essence, prescribing a fee for a request for information will directly reduce community and voluntary organisations' capacity for both their advocacy and service delivery functions. By enabling the Minister for Finance to prescribe a fee for requesting information, citizens' groups who make Freedom of Information requests, not out of idle curiosity but because they require information crucial to their advocacy and service delivery, will inevitably make fewer such requests because they will have to bear uneconomic costs for doing so. Additionally, it will inevitably result in a transfer of funds from the community and voluntary sector back to the State against a background of the sector being already underfunded, and the White Paper's own funding schemes being delayed and postponed. This is another unfair burden on the voluntary activity sector.
Such a prescribed fee, because of its deterrent effect, is a tax on civic activity and citizen engagement with the policy making process. Taxation as a tool to alter citizen behaviour is not a novel idea, because placing duties and charges on products that harm citizens can contribute to building a healthier society. However, unlike cigarettes or alcohol, civic action is not bad for one's health and it is to be cherished and encouraged, not deterred. However, as existing provisions in the 1997 Act allow for search and retrieval costs to be covered, the primary function of section 26 is to introduce charges that act as a deterrent. The wisdom of doing so against a background where citizen engagement with policy making is such that the voter turnout in 2002 was the lowest since 1923, is at best questionable.
More seriously, by actively seeking to deter citizen action this Bill curtails the legitimate democratic rights of citizens. Information directly determines the quality of one's citizenship. It is therefore particularly troubling that access to information about local or national services that vindicate one's rights as a citizen should be subject to a blanket prescribed fee, as this fee will primarily deter the poor. This is a significant step back from the current situation as it formalises in the legislation a widening of the gap between the quality of citizenship for the rich and poor.
The fee is also questionable purely from a resource efficiency point of view. As Citizens As Partners, a handbook written for Government officials, points out:
Given the problems arising from poorly designed and implemented policies, governments indeed find strengthening their relations with citizens to be worth the investment. They also increasingly learn that not engaging in them can create much higher costs, through policy failure in the short-term as well as loss of trust, legitimacy and policy effectiveness in the long-term.
A key challenge of governance is encouraging and harnessing the energy of people across the country who want to contribute to solving our society's problems. This is not accomplished by hiding information from citizens.
Requests from community and voluntary groups under the Freedom of Information Act tend to focus on the use of State funds, providing an extra level of oversight to ensure their efficient use. Those requests from community voluntary groups also form the basis for the research that they do, resulting in resources that are often heavily relied upon by Government and political parties in their own policy making. Groups that have expressed concern about the implications of the measures proposed by the Bill work in areas such as parenting, supporting carers, addiction, the rights of the unemployed, patients' rights, legal aid and combating bullying. They have, for example, used the Freedom of Information Act to research methadone versus drug-free treatment facilities across Ireland in order to compile reports on treatment services for addicted young people. They also found out which voluntary organisations are grant-aided by health boards to provide health and social services - as eight of the ten health boards had failed to provide this information, a freedom of information request was made. This grant aid involves up to €700 million of public money and yet it was only by using the Freedom of Information Act that some degree of transparency or accountability was introduced.
Other aims were to find out the destinations of Irish emigrants as recorded in the labour force survey - after this information was first refused; to find out the number of days schools are actually open during the year to ensure that children's entitlement to a full school year is being met; and to discover the number of Irish prison inmates with mental illnesses. Such information benefits our society. We should not discourage the search for such information with punitive charges.
The third concern we have involves the addition to the categories of exemption to the Freedom of Information Act, because it erodes the rights of citizens and citizens' groups to engage fully in the democratic governance of this country. The increase in the amount of categories of exemption to the Act places a further barrier to citizens and citizens' groups conducting research to better inform local and national services.
A concern of some groups within the community and voluntary sector is that by tightening the criteria for eligible information, this Bill will inevitably make informal requests for information more difficult. One of the benefits of the 1997 Act was to effect a cultural shift where information was more freely given out, and that itself affected the number of informal requests which do not go through the freedom of information channels. If information is increasingly withheld, civil servants, perhaps because of their cautious nature, may start refusing those informal requests as well as requests made under the Freedom of Information Act. This is a concern for groups which currently get information from State bodies without needing to use the freedom of information channels.
Another concern is that civil servants can easily ensure that a difficult topic remains under deliberation and not covered by the Act for an indefinite period. This could be done by leaving an unanswered letter on file so that the topic is not formally closed. At a minimum, the "under deliberation" exemption should be time-limited from the time of commencement of consideration. We would back the Irish Council for Civil Liberties in the view that as a general principle, denial of access to a record should be based on a specific harm to an individual or the public interest that would arise from the release of that record.
Overall, the Bill represents an adversarial rather than partnership approach in terms of citizens' engagement with policy making. That this Bill has arisen without consultation with citizens' groups has resulted in it favouring administrative convenience without any balancing component of democratic accountability or support for active citizenship. It is significant that the Bill's 27 sections are overwhelmingly focused on restricting citizens' access to information and it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to find measures designed to build on the achievements of the 1997 Freedom of Information Act and actively increase transparency.
We are heartened by the Government's approach to the White Paper on the community voluntary sector. It is an enlightened policy which is popular in the sector. It may be that when publishing the Bill under consideration, the Government underestimated the effect it will have in undermining the good work it has done in the community voluntary area. If so, it underlines the need to consult with citizens' groups before publishing such legislation. The Wheel therefore asks that the Government does not make changes to the 1997 Freedom of Information Act until it has undertaken such consultation, and that community and voluntary groups be involved. Without such consultation, it is unlikely that the Government will understand the scale of the difficulties this Bill will cause for citizens' groups. As it stands, this Bill would represent a profound negative step in the development of the relationship between the Government and the community and voluntary sector.
The Wheel, because of its network of thousands of groups in the community and voluntary sector, would be able to help in getting their views and creating an input to the Bill, but time is needed and we cannot do this within the current timeframe. The White Paper on supporting voluntary activity outlined a positive framework within which the State and community and voluntary groups could work together for the benefit of our society. Working with these citizens' organisations harnesses the knowledge and experience of their members, reaches out to the most disadvantaged, reduces resistance to Government policies and helps build public trust in the political process. These are significant prizes that would be seriously compromised were this Bill to be passed in its current form.
In addition to recommending that the Bill not be enacted before proper consultation takes place, The Wheel recommends that no additional fees be added to those already allowed for in the original Freedom of Information Act 1997, and that there should be no addition to the categories of exemption to the Act.
How much consultation time would The Wheel need to meet the groups it believes will be most affected, and bring back a response as to the impact of the Bill, and suggestions on the possible changes that might avoid such impact? The second question I would like to ask relates to the point Ms Garvey made about the elasticity of the deliberative process. Has she encountered an example of funding bodies spinning out the deliberative process in an attempt to avoid having to account for the way in which they make their decisions? The power to declare when the deliberative process ends, which is an extraordinary provision, reminds me of the Red Queen in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, who said "Things are what I say they are." Does Ms Garvey find that agencies have a tendency, even within the existing rules, to avoid releasing information by stringing out the deliberative process?
Ms Garvey
There is a number of different answers to the first question about the adequate length of consultation. Although the principles of best practice which are contained in the White Paper do not refer to an ideal length of time of consultation, the implementation and advisory group which is trying to implement these recommendations has cited changes in charity legislation and regulation as an example of legislative change that would require consultation. The group has recommended that the consultation period should be at least four months, at an absolute minimum. The community and voluntary sector representatives on the committee made a principled recommendation that the consultation period should be, ideally, nearer to six months. The Wheel can produce superficial answers rapidly as part of the consultation process by means of electronic media and e-mail, but groups which do not have access to electronic media are automatically excluded from such processes. The desire for a quick response removes the possibility of full consultation with members and citizens. People should be given the chance to conduct their own consultation.
I will ask my colleague, Mr. Matthew Hamilton, to respond to Deputy Bruton's second question, which related to the elasticity of the deliberative process. I should point out that The Wheel, which is a network of community and voluntary organisations, has not had direct experience of using the Freedom of Information Act. The groups which comprise The Wheel provided the examples I mentioned in my earlier contribution. I would not like to say any more about The Wheel's experience, although Mr. Hamilton may wish to do so.
Mr. Hamilton
I would like to give the committee a couple of examples which relate to the issue raised by Deputy Richard Bruton. The Wheel found out on Friday that it would be able to address this committee today and it received a number of responses from its member groups yesterday. When a person tried to find out whether NTL's pricing policy was an abuse, under EU competition law, of its dominant position in the market, he was told that the matter was covered by the Official Secrets Act. He later managed to acquire the relevant information under the Freedom of Information Act. Other information that was not made known until the Freedom of Information Act was used related to the Irish voluntary organisations that have benefited from EU adult education programme public grants administered by Léargas - it was claimed that this information could not be made available because the beneficiaries did not wish to be identified - and the Government's representatives on EU financial committees.
The experience of the limited number of groups The Wheel has been able to talk to in the past 24 hours is that the Freedom of Information Act facilitates access to material that would not be made available under the existing culture if the Act were not in place. I should mention the positive experience of representatives of the Irish Patients Association, who said that the people they work with are keen to provide information on an informal basis, instead of having to use the Freedom of Information Act, as a result of the change in culture. It is considered that the cultural change is a consequence of the introduction of the Act.
Has anyone alerted The Wheel to the provisions of section 20 of the amending Bill, which provides that a Secretary General will be able to tell a body, such as a health board or a drugs task force, that information will not be released because the deliberative process is in progress? Has anyone given The Wheel an insight into how the process may be adversely used?
Mr. Hamilton
The specific recommendation we made resulted from the fact that a private citizen related his personal experience to us. I will not go into it in detail, but he said that having worked in that environment, he is familiar with the ways of keeping a file open. The groups that have contacted The Wheel in the past 24 hours have not given specific examples. If we are given time to conduct proper consultation in the next couple of months, we will be able to answer a number of questions asked by this committee or other interested parties. The Wheel has a valuable resource in its network of several thousand groups and it is happy to play its role in helping to make their voices heard.
The delegation has suggested that there should be a time limit on the deliberative period, which seems like it can go on forever, but such a procedure is already in place. Freedom of information officers in the 370 organisations can always say that the deliberative process is ongoing, but that can be appealed to the appeals commissioner. As I understand it, there will be no appeals mechanism if there is a certificate. If one makes a query to a local authority in relation to a planning matter before a decision is made, one will not receive information and one will be told that it is part of the deliberative process. One is entitled to appeal such a decision at present, but it has been proposed that the right to appeal will not exist in future if the subject of the appeal is quoted as being under the deliberative process and under a certificate. I wanted to make that observation.
I thank the delegation from The Wheel for the interesting presentation. Did anybody indicate to the organisation that the review was in progress? The Wheel quoted from the White Paper on voluntary activity, which outlined the Government's commitment to bringing about greater openness, accountability and transparency in the public administration system. The White Paper, which was published in 2000, referred favourably to the Freedom of Information Act in that regard. Is the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs now responsible for the voluntary and community sectors, including The Wheel?
Ms Garvey
The relevant Department is the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, under the Minister, Deputy Ó Cuív.
I can never say the full title as it is so long. Responsibility for the voluntary and community sectors has been transferred from the Department of Social and Family Affairs, which used to be a very closed Department, but which has adopted an open and consultative culture in the past ten years. Most of the Department's civil servants were delighted when there was a substantial change in its culture in the early 1990s. Did the new Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs fail to contact The Wheel because it does not share the culture of openness of the Department of Social and Family Affairs? The developments in the latter Department in the past ten years have been very beneficial, as it was not regarded terribly favourably, but most people now have quite high esteem for its civil servants. Is that one of the reasons The Wheel was not consulted?
Ms Garvey
I can confirm that we were not consulted. Responsibility for the relationship between the community and voluntary sectors has been transferred from the former Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs to the new Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs. I do not feel - this is a personal judgment - that the lack of consultation relates to the culture of a specific Department. The Minister, Deputy Ó Cuív, and the Minister of State, Deputy Noel Ahern, publicly stated their commitment to the White Paper on supporting voluntary activity and all that it encompasses, as recently as last October and November. The Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs is made up of six different units which have come together to form a brand new Department, and it is very supportive of the White Paper.
It is important to remember that community and voluntary organisations interact with a myriad of Departments on a myriad of issues and the new Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs has the lead responsibility for this area. There was lack of consultation on the part of all Departments with all community and voluntary organisations and stakeholders in their policy making.
The second question concerns the imposition of the fee. The view of the United States on freedom of information is that it is not worthwhile imposing a charge on voluntary and civic organisations, for instance, because it imposes certain duties of collection of fees and so on. It is not an efficient mechanism, therefore, and the experience in the US is that imposing a request fee deters people from making the request.
Does Mr. Hamilton have any sense of the importance of the fee issue to voluntary and community organisations, especially smaller ones? What are the existing charges? I understand there is a provision to charge for the work involved in retrieving information but that has been lost sight of in the debate. A charging structure is already available. What is proposed in this Bill is an initial fee, which the State has decided does deter people from making requests, but that moderate fees can be charged for the cost of retrieving the information, rather like our own. Would Mr. Hamilton have an idea about the cost of that to some organisations and how the proposed changes would impact on them?
Mr. Hamilton
On the search and retrieve fees, according to the figures given to us by the free legal advice centres, the current situation already allows the imposition of charges to cover costs and where a broad range of non-personal information is requested, it is our experience that such costs can be significant. We have not had the time to do a proper consultation and therefore we cannot give the committee those numbers but we could get them for members if we were given the appropriate amount of time.
For any community and voluntary group to do research under the Freedom of Information Act, it often entails a number of requests to get a broad-based piece of research. I facilitated one group dealing with addiction which had to make a request to all the health boards a number of times to find out the comparison between methadone and drug free treatment. That work was done by a volunteer who did not have to pay for any of the information because she was not charged a search and retrieve fee but if she was paid a mandatory fee - €20 was cited by the high level group as an example - for every request, even if she only made ten requests for that particular piece of research, that is a cost of €200 to a volunteer who has given her time to produce research which was subject to two Government consultations. That is research the Government would not have if she was taxed out of the ability to conduct that research.
It is important to recognise that much of the research carried out by community and voluntary organisations is done by individual citizens in their volunteering capacity, and it is unfortunate that they should be actively discouraged in this manner. Many community and voluntary groups are very small. They are made up of local residents' associations, sports clubs, etc. They are made up of small groups of people who have come together on a particular issue. They are not one of the 5,000 registered charities. They do not have resources yet they are being asked to dip into their own pockets to do something for the good of the community. That would not be an appropriate regime to pursue given that there is provision for the direct costs of search and retrieve to be recovered. Introducing a fee the primary focus of which is to deter people from making numerous requests actively discourages people from taking responsibility and doing something good for their communities.
Mention was made earlier that the changes in the Freedom of Information Act have improved relationships with the Irish Parents——
Mr. Hamilton
Patients Association.
What relationships have been improved as a result of those changes? How has the position changed since the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act?
Mr. Hamilton
I will try to synopsise the comments we received yesterday from the Irish Patients Association. It said that it had experience of having obtained, without recourse to freedom of information, official management information which it found to be inaccurate. It said it has not made those public but brought it to the attention of the originators in a non-blame framework in order to improve the quality of executive management information. It said that mistakes do happen and that it is a useful control to have outside eyes to review such data. As an NGO, it said it values its relationships with providers but the fact that some may use such information in a sensational and blameful way should not be the driving force for curtailment of rights but rather the driver should be citizen centred. It further stated that many exposures have not been written or reported in a blameful way but rather reported what happened, why it happened, when it happened and the reasons for the event.
That group is trying to get information without frustrating a relationship with the relevant Department or health authority. It is seeking to be helpful in correcting inaccurate information. I was speaking to a representative yesterday who said they have found that the relationships across the range of Departments and health boards they deal with has improved dramatically as a result of the Freedom of Information Act because requests for information on a formal basis are made easier. They get more information and they do not have to go the informal route. They have adopted a non-blame route so they are not using the Freedom of Information Act as a weapon but are seeking to obtain information and build a partnership. That is a specific instance of how they have built relationships.
They deal with doctors, consultants, hospitals, health boards and the Department of Health and Children, is that right?
Mr. Hamilton
That is my understanding from the conversation I had with them. I will be able to pass on their statement to the committee in full. I will not read it all out here.
I thank Ms Garvey and Mr. Hamilton for their presentations. They said that not many people are aware of The Wheel. Who was the driving force behind the setting up of The Wheel in 1999? I accept many of the points they made about the transparency of their own organisation but their users, who are made up of 3,750 organisations, elect the core group board which determines policy. How do those people communicate with the organisations to get themselves onto the board, and could we have the names of some of those on the board? Also, who are The Atlantic Philantrophies?
Ms Garvey
I thank the Senator for the questions. In terms of who was the driver——
Who were the driving people behind setting it up and why did they believe there was a need to do that?
Ms Garvey
In relation to the 1999——
Yes.
Ms Garvey
The catalyst that started The Wheel was an article published by Dr. Mary Redmond, who is a solicitor, in The Sunday Business Post at the end of 1988. The article referred to her experiences of founding the Irish Hospice Foundation throughout the 1980s and 1990s and the benefits she had observed in groups working together to address common issues while maintaining their independence. That article inspired an invitation from Fr. Harry Bohan, who runs an institute called Ceifin in Ennis, County Clare, to Dr. Redmond to speak at a conference in November 1988 about the developments within civil society. It also inspired a number of responses to the article from 15 to 20 people. At the conference, Dr. Redmond issued a further invitation to a group of people to follow up this idea. She was not an expert in the community and voluntary sector but she was willing to rent a room in a hotel the following week. Approximately 60 people responded to that invitation.
Without labouring the point, it could be said that those 60 people in the room - I can provide lists later - voted to say that there was a need within the community and voluntary sector for a networking organisation that could be resourced and could act as a connecting mechanism in a supportive manner with community and voluntary organisations. This mandate was then taken to a further 600 organisations in three national conferences in 1999, which asked the same question, namely, if it was a good idea. The 500 or 600 participants endorsed the original mandate and it was only then that staff were employed to provide a resource. Then 18 months of research was undertaken. I was the first staff person to be hired on a full-time basis the following May.
This brings me to the second question on what is meant by The Atlantic Philanthropies. It is a private philanthropic foundation that invests in, and makes donations to, philanthropic purposes from the funds of a private individual in the United States by the name of Chuck Feeney, an Irish-American millionaire, who has invested significantly in third level educational projects. Most of the universities in Ireland have received millions of dollars, originally anonymously, through The Atlantic Philanthropies, which, until 18 months ago, gave all of its money anonymously, primarily in Ireland to the areas of third level education and infrastructure support to the community and voluntary sector. It is under the second programme that The Wheel received initial seed funding to hire me and other staff.
With regard to the board of directors, we have up to 6,000 people on our database and more than 3,700 organisations benefit from our services. Every individual on the database is free to nominate anybody from within the community and voluntary sector to serve on The Wheel's board of directors. We distributed a mail shot four weeks ago with that in mind. We hold annual elections. There is a 15 member board, which is elected by the participants and there is the opportunity to co-opt five members, bringing the board membership up to 20. One third of the elected members resign annually and we have just closed the nominations for our current annual elections. We have 11 nominees from all over the community and voluntary sector to take up the five places. The active participants from the community and voluntary sector are allocated votes in the election. We are in the process of introducing a subscription package which will include everybody who subscribes on an annual basis to The Wheel, as well as those who avail and participate in our conference, meetings and services on a regular basis.
Thank you for your comprehensive answer. I thank Ms Garvey and Mr. Hamilton for their presentation.
The witnesses withdrew.