Results 581-600 of 1,109,604 for in 'Dáil debates' OR in 'Committee meetings' (speaker:John Dolan OR speaker:Denis Naughten OR speaker:Barry Cowen OR speaker:Malcolm Noonan OR speaker:Paul McAuliffe OR speaker:Richard Bruton OR speaker:Darragh O'Brien OR speaker:Martin Browne OR speaker:Claire Kerrane OR speaker:Peadar Tóibín OR speaker:Colm Burke OR speaker:Francis Noel Duffy OR speaker:Pat Buckley OR speaker:Marian Harkin OR speaker:Catherine Murphy OR speaker:Patrick O'Donovan OR speaker:Fergus O'Dowd OR speaker:Paul Murphy OR speaker:Robert Troy OR speaker:Niall Collins OR speaker:Simon Harris OR speaker:Sorca Clarke OR speaker:Mary Lou McDonald OR speaker:Violet-Anne Wynne OR speaker:Seán Haughey OR speaker:Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire OR speaker:Brendan Howlin OR speaker:Marc Ó Cathasaigh OR speaker:Danny Healy-Rae OR speaker:Martin Heydon OR speaker:Michael Healy-Rae)

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: Okay, and there are eight prosecutions initiated out of the 1,700 charities.

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: What is the current status of those prosecutions?

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: Are many more charities being considered? Are there more prosecutions on the way?

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: How much of the staffing resource of the Charities Regulator is dedicated towards these kinds of prosecutions or removal from the register?

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: This is an unusual question for the committee but is the regulator under-resourced in that area? I am surprised the regulator has only one dedicated staff member working on this.

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: That is very good. I will ask a very big question in two minutes and I do not suppose we will get to the bottom of it. Approved housing bodies are becoming a bigger part of housing provision and they are going to become difficult. There are encumbered assets with loans against them. There are unencumbered assets where some of these houses are being bought through fund-raising and have no...

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: Is it open to AHBs to change from charitable status? One of my concerns is that AHBs with charitable status may decide to change their status, which would lead to a complicated question about assets.

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: Has the regulator the power to retrospectively make sure the clauses are in place?

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Catherine Murphy: I thank Ms Delaney for answering. It was a very big question that took up two minutes.I have no doubt we will come back to this matter, including for the benefit of myself. I suggest that Deputy O'Connor makes his contribution before we take a break.

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Catherine Murphy: I hope the Deputy reported it.

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Catherine Murphy: Yes. We will take a ten-minute break. The meeting is suspended.

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Catherine Murphy: I welcome the witnesses back. I want to go back to the issue Deputy Ó Cathasaigh raised regarding approved housing bodies. I appreciate that some predate by a considerable distance the existence of the Charities Regulator. I have serious concerns about the asset base of properties for which the mortgage is paid off and that are now unencumbered. A couple of years ago, the Department...

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Catherine Murphy: The Charities Regulator is doing a piece of work with the Approved Housing Bodies Regulatory Authority. What is that work?

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Catherine Murphy: My attention was drawn to it when someone who was on the board of a small approved housing body was talking about their portfolio of properties. I was absolutely shocked by that. That is what prompted me to start asking questions about this. In theory, an organisation could change its constitution, but there are protections.

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Catherine Murphy: That goes to the governance and whoever is on the board of directors.

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Catherine Murphy: I am trying to envisage a situation. In the way AHBs are set up, there is often co-operation with the local authority. There would be a piece of land and housing would be developed, and that would be important because it brings some affordable housing supply. Some of this goes back decades. The bigger ones are of less concern because they were set up in a modern context and they are...

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Catherine Murphy: Who would bring that to the attention of the Charities Regulator? Is there something that can be identified in the accounts? Is it a question of a complaint coming to the regulator? Where are the routes from which it would get that information?

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Catherine Murphy: Some of the 11,000-odd charities are schools and sporting clubs and some charities are public services that, in other jurisdictions, would be public services rather than charities providing services to the public. One of the biggest responsibilities of the Charities Regulator is to make sure the public has trust in the other cohort of more recognised charities, if you like. There have been...

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Catherine Murphy: Okay. The Department would have had to have provided funding. Homelessness is an escalating problem. I remember the first time I raised the issue of a family sleeping in a car. It was ten years ago. It was 2014 and that kind of thing was unheard of before that. There would have been a cohort of people who would have been rough sleeping who would have had complex issues. It now...

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Catherine Murphy: On the Department and the Peter McVerry Trust, the Department would have had to provide it with funding or it would have got funding through the Dublin Region Homeless Executive. It possibly got funding from other local authorities as well. As the local authority in Kildare partners with the Peter McVerry Trust with regard to one of the homeless facilities, there is a direct relationship...