New social enterprises database 'totally separate' from Benefacts

Department of Public Expenditure and Reform was criticised over its decision last year to shut Benefacts, on which State agencies relied for free financial information 

PAC deputy chair Catherine Murphy said the project change 'doesn’t strike me as value for money'. Picture: RollingNews.ie

The head of the body charged with creating a new database of social enterprises has said that project is “totally separate” from Benefacts, the database of non-profits which was terminated last year.

Department of Rural and Community Development secretary general Mary Hurley told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) today that the two projects are “different things”.

Benefacts, she said, was “providing information regarding audited accounts”. 

“The other, for me, is around the accounting officer space,” she said.

The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER) received a great deal of criticism for its decision last year to shut Benefacts, which had received €7m in capital funding, given the extent to which State agencies such as the CSO relied on the free financial information it provided.

PAC deputy chair Catherine Murphy, who had previously described the closing of Benefacts as “extraordinary”, quoted to Ms Hurley a report by consultants Indecon regarding the defunct service, which had described it as necessary for the governance of the €14bn non-profit sector in Ireland.

This was heavily used by Government departments; it’s being wound down, and now we’re going to see something that’s going to duplicate it.

"That doesn’t strike me as value for money,” Ms Murphy said, adding that she wished to know what interaction there had been between the DPER and Ms Hurley’s department before the new project was commenced.

The DPER recently conceded that it had made use of Benefacts data itself in 2017 in compiling a report on the provision of public pensions.

Ms Hurley said her department had been “looking at how it could improve its own databases”.

She acknowledged that Benefacts had done “fantastic work” in terms of aiding the audit of non-profits, and that the information it had provided was “absolutely very useful”, but added that it had been set up “at a particular point in time”, and that the charities regulator now “covers a lot” of the same datasets.

The DPER had previously stated that it was necessary to shut Benefacts as “the State’s grant was far in excess of the quantifiable benefits derived” from it, a statement contradicted by the 2019 Indecon report.

TD Alan Dillon said the people of Mayo were suffering 'through no fault of their own' for their local authority’s sins.

Separately, the meeting heard how €1.1m in funding had been returned by Mayo County Council to the department after it emerged the completion grant money had been claimed by the local authority before works had been completed, or even started in some cases — a clear contradiction of the conditions for drawdown.

That issue had led to the complete cessation of funding for the Mayo local authority from the department, though Ms Hurley acknowledged that, while the matter had been a “huge concern” for the department, no referrals had been made to the gardaí on the back of same as there had been “no loss of public moneys”.

She acknowledged that had the department not caught the problem, the money would likely have been spent on something for which it had not been granted.

Mayo TD Alan Dillon bemoaned the fact that funding for the county had been frozen, given that it was the people of the county who were suffering “through no fault of their own” for their local authority’s sins.

He said that “negligence of their duties” had seen impacts on applications for road upgrades and the provision of walking and cycle tracks.

He asked if any applications which had been submitted during the freeze period could “be relooked at and possibly put back on funding stream as a priority”.