State also failed in its duty of care - Autism support

THE problems at Irish Autism Action are on one level the story of an individual charity struggling to meet growing demands for an increasingly complex range of services with increasingly fragile finances.

A mature, well-managed organisation needs to know its limits, to set and, if necessary, re-position its priorities and to communicate at all times what is going on behind its logos and slogans. That goes doubly for an organisation that relies entirely on public donations to keep it afloat.

Clearly, IAA has failed on some of those fronts. It did not hide its financial troubles — its last set of annual returns filed last month spelt out the difficulties and its auditors stated in the same documents that there were doubts about its ability to continue as a going concern.