Results 1-20 of 1,168,256 for in 'Dáil debates' OR (speaker:Ciarán Cuffe OR speaker:Michael McNamara OR speaker:Emer Higgins OR speaker:Mary Butler OR speaker:Paul Kehoe OR speaker:Michael Moynihan OR speaker:Maurice Quinlivan OR speaker:Marc MacSharry OR speaker:Ossian Smyth OR speaker:Michael Lowry OR speaker:Joe McHugh OR speaker:Claire Kerrane OR speaker:Holly Cairns OR speaker:Steven Matthews OR speaker:Neasa Hourigan OR speaker:Peadar Tóibín OR speaker:Thomas Byrne OR speaker:Colm Burke OR speaker:Peter Burke OR speaker:Cormac Devlin OR speaker:Anne Rabbitte OR speaker:Francis Noel Duffy OR speaker:Michael Creed OR speaker:Seán Fleming OR speaker:Matt Shanahan OR speaker:Brian Stanley OR speaker:Ivana Bacik OR speaker:Seán Haughey OR speaker:Michael McGrath OR speaker:Paschal Donohoe OR speaker:Alan Farrell OR speaker:James O'Connor OR speaker:Alan Kelly OR speaker:Jackie Cahill OR speaker:Carol Nolan OR speaker:Danny Healy-Rae) in 'Committee meetings'

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

Verona Murphy: We look forward to having the regulator back on that basis. I thank Ms Delaney.

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

Ciarán Cannon: I thank the witnesses for being here today. I was fortunate enough to head up a charity for almost seven years and I know the value of the work the regulator does in sustaining the public's trust in the charity sector as a whole and allowing charities to continue doing the good work they do. I thank it for that. In May of this year, the regulator issued a statement urging charities to be...

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

Ms Madeleine Delaney: The Deputy is correct that attendance is voluntary. We have quite good attendance but we are concerned that we are not reaching the volunteer-only very local charities that we really need to reach if we are to help them put in place governance and oversight measures, which is where charities can ultimately be exposed. We are doing a particular campaign or initiative...

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

Ms Madeleine Delaney: We are just waiting for the various provisions of the Act to be commenced. There are quite a lot of amendments in it. We have been engaging with Department officials on it, working out the practical implications of various aspects and trying to ascertain what would be for the very short term, the medium term and the long term. That provision certainly fits into the...

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

Ms Madeleine Delaney: One challenge is remaining agile.

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

Ms Madeleine Delaney: It means being more proactive as regards how we deal with matters that arise. It goes back to Deputy Verona Murphy's point. Understandably, in the first years of our establishment, in addition to getting up and running, we have looked at every single concern that has been raised with us. That is because we needed to build an understanding of the sector and the...

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

Paul McAuliffe: I thank the witnesses for being here this morning and the Comptroller and Auditor General for putting in the work on the report. I agree with Deputy Cannon that it is a very complex landscape and that we are dealing with charities of different capacities and sizes. I think roughly 11,000 charities are registered. Has their turnover been categorised in any way? How many fall into the very...

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

Paul McAuliffe: Does Ms Delaney have a breakdown for the number of charities that have incomes of less than €10,000 or €5,000 per year?

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

Paul McAuliffe: If a charity has less than €10,000, it is an incredibly small operation. It more than likely does not have any paid staff and is mostly volunteer run. Equally, the auditing requirements are very onerous. Regarding audit fees in some cases, I know of one group with a total income of €2,500 and the cost of auditing is just north of €1,000. Has any consideration been...

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

Paul McAuliffe: I find it very frustrating, as does the group itself, which I will not name, that to carry out charitable work, and it inherited a legacy structure, 50% of its fundraising is to satisfy the Charities Regulator. While that is necessary, and I cannot see any other way around it, there is scope to have a more agile approach for smaller charities, as Ms Delaney mentioned. I will leave that with...

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

Paul McAuliffe: They are identified as chief executive No. 2 in the report.

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

Paul McAuliffe: That is the first concern. Had the cash flow or the financial operational management not become an issue, it is likely that we might not have discovered the many other areas such as the co-mingling of donations, restricted and unrestricted funds, and issues of poor governance decisions by the board and so on. For the Charities Regulator, that must be a lesson in the sense that had the...

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

Paul McAuliffe: Does Ms Delaney accept that the relationship between CEO and chair is key? The governance issues or the protection of the public interest really rely on the board. When there is an entirely voluntary board and chairperson, however, without the independent resources of the staffing of the organisation, the board can be in a very weak position to monitor what is happening in the organisation.

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

Paul McAuliffe: I agree, but does Ms Delaney accept the resourcing of the board is the issue there? I am not speaking about a particular case here, but if there was any attempt by a senior staff member, the CEO or staff in general to mislead the board, it could be incredibly difficult for a board that may meet once a month, whose members perhaps do not know each other very well as board members and who do...

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

Paul McAuliffe: Ms Delaney is outlining the obligations of the directors and the board and I do not take from those. My point is that many directors find it very difficult to fulfil that because they are entirely dependent for resourcing and expertise and information on the people who work within the organisation. Where it goes wrong, that is often the challenge.

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

Paul McAuliffe: In some cases in community structures, for example, the people involved are very well meaning but perhaps do not have the experience and so on. That is the weakness of corporate governance in Ireland. It is the reason we will have other instances. We are not resourcing the boards. That brings me to my second point, which is the recruitment and retention of board members. Why in God's...

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

Catherine Murphy: Does Ms Delaney want to respond?

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

Ms Madeleine Delaney: It is a small percentage. Those which have over €5 million are 5.5%.

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

Catherine Murphy: What kind of organisations are they?

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

Ms Madeleine Delaney: Some of those are public bodies, like the HSE and universities. I have a list of them here. We have this information. We conduct as much research as we can and we analyse the information we have in the annual reports, which are on our website.