Finlay: State negligent on the supervision of charities

The head of one of the country’s leading charities believes the Government has been grossly negligent in failing to adequately supervise where billions of taxpayers’ money has been spent in the charities sector.

Fergus Finlay, chief executive of the children’s charity Barnardos, said the State had abdicated its duty of care for the disabled and other vulnerable members of society by not strictly implementing conditions on how funding from the Government can be used.

In 2012, Section 38 and 39 organisations received almost €3.3bn from the State and Mr Finlay claimed that because the HSE turned “a blind eye” to contract agreements, it resulted in top-up payments and other scandals blighting the sector.

He said most organisations in receipt of State funding had to sign service level agreements and these were essentially legally binding contracts which determined the levels of pay in accordance with public sector pay norms.

He said he could not understand how Rehab Lotteries spend €1.3m in costs operating its scratch card scheme.

“How in name of God did the scratch card lottery cost €1.3m… that’s totally out of order,” he said.

Meanwhile, one of the other groups that will no longer benefit from the Charitable Lotteries Scheme has said it is closing its scratch card game with the loss of two jobs.

The Irish Cancer Society, which ran a scratch card lottery with the Polio Fellowship of Ireland, which is a subsidiary of Rehab, said it was making annual losses since the arrival of the National Lottery and the introduction of the cap on prize money.

It said between 2009 and 2013 cumulative losses amounted to €420,000 but this was offset by the €1.2m it received from the scheme during the same period.

“Given the increased losses and with no prospect of recovery, in November last the society and its partner made a decision to close the lottery. This will happen in the next few months and will involve the loss of two jobs,” the society said.