Results 1-20 of 1,126,727 for in 'Dáil debates' OR in 'Committee meetings' (speaker:George Lee OR speaker:Roderic O'Gorman OR speaker:Martin Kenny OR speaker:Brendan Griffin OR speaker:Colm Burke OR speaker:Peadar Tóibín OR speaker:Mary Lou McDonald OR speaker:Jim O'Callaghan OR speaker:Paul Donnelly OR speaker:Patricia Ryan OR speaker:Michael Healy-Rae OR speaker:Michael Ring OR speaker:Paul Murphy OR speaker:Matt Carthy OR speaker:Seán Haughey OR speaker:Richard Boyd Barrett OR speaker:Sorca Clarke OR speaker:Rose Conway-Walsh OR speaker:Cathal Berry OR speaker:Martin Browne OR speaker:Dara Calleary OR speaker:Colm Brophy OR speaker:Michael Collins OR speaker:Helen McEntee OR speaker:Jennifer Murnane O'Connor OR speaker:Carol Nolan OR speaker:Brian Stanley OR speaker:Marc Ó Cathasaigh OR speaker:Catherine Murphy OR speaker:Darragh O'Brien OR speaker:Chris Andrews OR speaker:Eoin Ó Broin OR speaker:Jennifer Carroll MacNeill)

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)

Ms Madeleine Delaney: I know the work is ongoing and they are being considered. I do not have precise numbers but a recommendation comes to me for either a removal or a prosecution.

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

Ms Madeleine Delaney: We have one staff member at HEO grade who effectively works full time on this project and has done for the best part of a year. Our legal adviser has been working with her. We also ran those prosecutions in-house because we had a previous prosecution that we gave to our external advisers. It has not yet been heard but that is through no fault of theirs or ours....

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

Ms Madeleine Delaney: We had one dedicated staff member who was doing that. We have sought and been granted approval, in principle, for another dedicated legal adviser to do that. We were able to do the work by doing it in-house for less than €10,000 for the eight prosecutions.

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

Ms Madeleine Delaney: That cohort of the sector is particularly complicated and troublesome. There are 438 approved housing bodies.

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

Ms Madeleine Delaney: No, it should not be as in their governing document says what they have to do. Again when we are looking at them as part of the registration process, we look at what we call "key standard clauses" to see that they have them, which locks in the property for the charitable purpose. They cannot just stop being a charity and decide to do something else. That is how it...

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

Ms Madeleine Delaney: This is something that we need to do. We will work more closely with the Approving Housing Bodies Regulator on this because it is obviously aware of the connection. We need to start identifying the different cohorts and the AHBR will have more information than we do. That will help us identify ones where maybe we can look at them and check the status of their...

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

James O'Connor: I welcome all the witnesses. The Peter McVerry Trust is in the headlines for the wrong reasons, which has prompted a lot of questions that need to be answered around what merits the Charities Regulator getting involved to undertake investigative work. Under Part IV of the Charities Act 2009, the Charities Regulator has the power to appoint investigators to investigate the affairs of any...

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

James O'Connor: In how many instances has that happened? As the Peter McVerry Trust grew between 2011 and 2022, I understand that it took over nine separate charities. The trust’s remit is supposed to be housing and homelessness, but the purpose of one of those charities was the advancement of religion, which is not one of the trust’s charitable purposes. The trust is in receipt of...

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

James O'Connor: An approximate figure is okay.

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

James O'Connor: The reason I ask is there is a lot of grime on the window of the immigrant investor programme, IIP, which I am concerned about. Nobody is quite sure why it was shut down. A number of charities were involved in the process of obtaining it. There are multiple reasons - "issues occurred" and pressure from the European Commission and other aspects at an international level but looking at the...

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

James O'Connor: Will Ms Delaney elaborate on that? She said it was not something the Charities Regulator was specifically looking at.

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

James O'Connor: I want to be careful; I am not from a legal profession but I want to ask the question because it is relevant. Is Ms Delaney aware of many charitable bodies accountable to the Charities Regulator from an inspection point of view that left that structure and went into a company limited by guarantee structure or out of the charity structure to obtain funds from the IIP?

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

James O'Connor: Ms Delaney is not aware of that.

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

James O'Connor: I encourage Ms Delaney to do some digging. It has been brought to my attention as a Member of the Oireachtas. I will not bring it up but it has crossed my desk.

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

James O'Connor: I will.

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

James O'Connor: I will defer to the second round because I am interested some of the responses. Is that okay, Chairperson?

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

Sitting suspended at 11.03 a.m. and resumed at 11.16 a.m.

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

Ms Madeleine Delaney: Currently, it does not have to notify us of changes to its constitution. A lot do but there is a provision in the amendment Act to make sure they do, which is an important protection. They cannot come off the register without contacting us. If they were a charity that came on the register by virtue of having a CHY from Revenue Commissioners, which many have, then...

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

Ms Madeleine Delaney: We have just started. We have good contacts with the approved bodies regulator. We have a memorandum of understanding in place under which we have operated for the purposes of the recent investigation. There was a gap between CEOs there as there was in my organisation so I recently got together with the new CEO and we made some plans for how we will work together in...