Tánaiste signs order to give charity regulator investigative powers

Implementation of charity regulatory reforms will be delayed until September 5th next to allow for recruitment of staff for the regulator's office, Tánaiste and Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald has said.

She told Senator Marie Louise O’Donnell that “today I am signing the necessary statutory instrument to commence Part 4 to take effect from 5th September 2016”.

Part 4 of the 2009 Charities Act deals with the charity regulator’s functions in relation to investigations and enforcement.

Ms Fitzgerald said the September date was to allow “for the recruitment over the coming weeks of the necessary staffing resources to support these important functions”.

She was also examining the legislation to if there were other provisions that could be brought in quickly.

Ms O’Donnell raised the issue in the wake of the controversy about financial irregularities and governance issues at the charity Console, helping those bereaved by suicide.

The Taoiseach’s nominee said recent scandals in the charity sector had been allowed to snowball because the essential legislative sections were left uncommenced and under-resourced.

Small levy suggested

She suggested that if resources were an issue, “maybe we could allow charities to pay a very small levy to fund the regulatory activity”.

She said the legislation had had an “outrageous history”, having been enacted almost 10 years ago but with major sections of it not implemented.

She had always felt that “when we enact legislation there is a presumption that once it appears on the Statute Book, it will at least become effective”.

But for the charity regulator, “large and vital sections of the Bill remain inactive and important powers are denied”.

Referring to the current controversy, she said it was “possibly the worst of all scandals because [what had transpired at] an organisation like Console murders hope in the people who placed such hope in this organisation. Of course, it is the people at the head of it, not those who work in it, who murder that hope and abandon the sense of the humane in themselves.”

Ms Fitzgerald said she was deeply concerned about the Console revelations and the “betrayal of the goodwill of thousands of people around the country and, indeed, of the taxpayer”.

She said the unwritten agreement between the charity and the people - that the people’s money will be efficiently and appropriately used - had been broken.

“The betrayal also reaches to the collective trust charities place in one another to uphold good governance, standards and public confidence in the sector.”