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Voluntary Sector

Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 17 February 2022

Thursday, 17 February 2022

Questions (3)

Paul Donnelly

Question:

3. Deputy Paul Donnelly asked the Minister for Rural and Community Development her views on the winding down of a company (details supplied) that provided customised data to sections of the community and voluntary sector; the new regulation that will be provided by the Charities Regulatory Authority in place of the company; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [8968/22]

View answer

Oral answers (6 contributions)

Could the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, report on the closure of Benefacts, which provided customised data to the community and voluntary sector? What plans are in place to replace this incredibly important service?

The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has provided grant funding to Benefacts since 2015. My Department has had no funding relationship with Benefacts. I understand the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform undertook a review in 2020 that found that the business case for its continued funding of Benefacts was no longer justified. Accordingly, the decision was made to terminate its funding.

In respect of the reference by the Deputy to new regulations by the Charities Regulator, I want to take this opportunity to clarify that there is no direct connection between the work underway by the regulator and the services previously provided by Benefacts. The regulator is in the process of developing a classification standard for registered charities. Classification is a way of ordering charitable organisations by reference to predefined groups and sub-groups. The standard will be comparable with classification standards in other jurisdictions, enabling international comparisons to be made. It also takes account of the charitable purposes set out in the Charities Act 2009, which form the basis for registration as a charitable organisation.

The introduction of a formal standard by the regulator will provide more reliable and consistent data on the make-up of the charity sector and will benefit a wide range of stakeholders, helping to inform policymaking in relevant areas.

I am disappointed with the answer because it is important to have independent verification of information and data. Benefacts provided Ireland's only comprehensive and publicly available database of civil society, non-profit and voluntary organisations in Ireland. It provided specialised data services to the non-profit sector, State and others. The support it received enabled it to deliver a comprehensive database of all Irish non-profit organisations. It was updated daily and represented a unique compendium of Ireland's 34,000 civil society organisations. It fed into the Central Statistics Office and had a website. It provided a free public report for the sector. Many of us have used data that Benefacts has provided.

Before Benefacts, there were no data on which to build a reliable picture of Ireland's highly diverse €14 billion sector, with its more than 34,000 non-profit organisations and 165,000 employees. All the data we have came directly from Benefacts. I am very worried that many of the data will now go all over the place and that there will be no centralised group or organisation, independent of the State, that we can use.

There was value in what Benefacts did but we have to be cognisant of the taxpayers' money. There was a business case made in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and it did not justify continuing the funding, sadly. The data on the Benefacts database are publicly available from the organisations listed on it. Obviously, there was a value to having data collated in one location but those data are still available from the organisations included on the database.

We are developing an initiative separate from that of Benefacts. It will be a bigger project and take time. My hope is that it will have live information on grant-approved bodies that the State supports, if we decide to go down that route.

The worrying part is that the Minister of State's Department may put something in place. He has acknowledged the importance of a group or organisation collating all the data.

I note that there are 34,000 organisations and 165,000 people who are employed. There is much information and data out there that are really important to policymakers and non-governmental organisations for them to be able to put cases forward in relation to the community, voluntary and charity sector. As I said, and I will say it again, I am concerned that while the Minister of State's Department may do something into the future and is looking at it, there was an organisation in place that was providing all of the information and live daily updates on the information. I hear what the Minister of State is saying in terms of the business case having been made, but I think that closing it down and us being unable to get those data is something that is very concerning.

To explain the difference between what we are scoping at the moment, the Deputy will know that community and voluntary organisations often apply multiple times to different State bodies, often within a very short period. It is part of our strategic plan going into the future that we want to make it easier for community and voluntary organisations to apply. We want to make it coherent and more streamlined. That will involve a whole-of-government approach. There is a bit of work involved in this. We are doing a scoping exercise via Pobal at the moment. Obviously, we have to see the results coming out of that. It is a different project to what Benefacts has done. If it all goes to plan, it would ultimately provide us with live information on who we are supporting across Government. Obviously, it will be of benefit to Departments as well but most importantly, it will make the process for community and voluntary organisations of applying for State support more coherent with less red tape, as well as faster and more efficient.

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