Government urged to implement Charities Act

Almost four years after it was first published, the Government has been urged to finally implement the 2009 Charities Act to give public confidence to a sector which now handles €5.7bn every year.

Today, The Wheel, the country’s largest network of charities with over 900 member organisations, will hold it annual conference in Croke Park where it will discuss issues facing the sector and the need for the regulator which the implementation of the Charities Act would bring.

Ivan Cooper, The Wheel’s director of advocacy, said there are 8,000 charities in Ireland, employing 100,000 people with €5.7bn per year in turnover.

“The growth of the sector is enormous,” he said. “The real issue is that the charities sector is now a very significant proportion of the economy. There are a lot of public funds being controlled. The issue is that you have good transparency in the public service as to how funds are used with the Freedom of Information Act, etc. We don’t have the same kind of information about decisions being made with public funds in the charities sector.”

In 2011, the Government deferred implementation of the Charities Act — including the establishment of a Charities Regulatory Authority and Register of Charities — as part of what Justice Minister Alan Shatter described as an “urgent need to make savings in Government expenditure”.

It is now hoped the implementation will take place in 2014, with Mr Shatter saying in a parliamentary reply that his department is reviewing the submissions received from a public consultation.

Mr Shatter said he looked forward to publishing the results in due course and to giving a further indication of the Government’s plans for the introduction of an operational Charities Regulatory Authority, the creation of a statutory Register of Charities, and full implementation of the Charities Act 2009.

In the interim, the sector has made efforts to regulate itself through the formation of an, albeit voluntary, governance code for charities.

Mr Cooper said there is a criminal consequence of the lack of regulation.

“At the moment there is no law that makes it very clear that an organisation that is claiming to be charitable actually is charitable. We have a range of bogus charity collectors sticking labels in doors and quoting a fake charity number. They are not officially breaking any law. That is the problem, so the gardaí cannot go after them.”