Senators seek to regulate €6bn charity sector

Labour senators will move next week to regulate some €6bn a year in taxpayers’ funds spent on charities amid concern about abuse of the monies and the failure to monitor the sector.

The Labour senators intend to apply pressure on Justice Minister Alan Shatter to regulate 7,800 charities in Ireland in a move that could further strain tensions in the coalition.

Senator John Whelan yesterday said successive governments’ failure to hold to account the multi-billion euro charity and voluntary sector was “unacceptable and reckless”.

He added: “I share the genuine and well-founded concerns of many working in the sector and at the coalface that the lack of transparency and inadequate regulation reflects on the entire sector is damaging to the public trust, and with literally hundreds of millions of euro at stake, it is wide open to being exploited and abused.”

The Oireachtas research unit has provided Mr Whelan with details of Ireland’s charity and volunteer sector, which reveals there are more than 7,800 registered charities operating with an estimated income from donations, grants and State funding of €6bn annually. This equates to nearly half the €13.6bn budget of the Department of Health, yet hundreds of millions of it “remains unaccounted for due to the lack of transpar-ency”, Mr Whelan said.

The previous administration had introduced the Charities Act 2009, which Labour now wants implemented. “Virtually anyone can go out in the morning and start up a charity while vast sums of money are being sucked out on hefty salaries, exorbitant levels of commission and hefty administrative costs,” added Mr Whelan.

The 12 senators have agreed to launch a motion in private members time in the Seanad next Wednesday which will effectively apply pressure on the justice minister.

“We expect this will receive broad-based support. We want him to implement it in full,” said Mr Whelan.

Dóchas, an umbrella group representing 49 charities, has lobbied government for regulation of the sector. It wrote to TDs and senators on Sep 7 pressing for the act to be introduced.

Mr Shatter has said it is not possible to regulate charities under legislation at this time, “given the likely scale of the financial and staffing resources implied, and that this should be deferred”.

As an alternative, his department suggested the charities sector could itself set up a voluntary codes of practice for fundraising.

Mr Shatter’s spokesman last night confirmed the establishment of “an independent charities regulatory authority was “currently deferred for budgetary reasons”.

But Mr Whelan added: “It is no longer acceptable that the Department of Justice and the Government procrastinate any longer in the full implementation of the Charities Act 2009. The legislation was in gestation for 10 years and now languishes on the statute books for the past three years without being enforced.

“The excuse that it is not being implemented on cost grounds doesn’t hold any water. Indeed, its enforcement could actually save the State money and badly-needed resources, and could well be self-financing.”