Will it be mandatory to publish the salaries of CEO’s of some of these charities.?

Long overdue.

Oh I’d say theres scandalous amounts of “leakage” in 99% of Charity’s, a lot of people get rich off other peoples good intentions….

Totally agree that charities should publish finances.

I believe like speaking evil of the dead Charities have been the greatest untouchables in Ireland since the foundation of the State
We have ignored the fact that this is now a massive industry and consumes vast amounts of our monies whether by way of taxation and Government Grants or people collecting from us in a million different ways.
Those of you who have read my views on this subject know that my concern stems from the horrible feeling that Annual Reports nowadays from the sector coincide with Press Releases published with pictures of smiling Junior Ministers. Their contents intend to frighten us with the alarming increases in the particular clients dealt with whether they be the Lonely the Old the Depressed or the Raped.
Annual Reports could be true but who is to say that the figures aren’t cooked to inflate self importance and protect the funding we have to give them every year. After all who in their right minds would believe that the books could be audited when confidentiality is the watchword of the very organisations sucking huge monies from us to pay staff and Management without accountability.
We have all heard the stories of CEO’s in the Charity business striding their way around Third World Countries like potentates so full of their own importance that this alone is their contributionwhile at home there is a complete lack of governance in respect of the monies handled and the work done.
More recently there are rumours (that some people believe have been around for years ) that priests reported to their Seniors for child abuse in years gone by weren’t always just moved to other parishes but may also have been moved into Missionary roles.
All of this screams out for more control more auditing and more transparency by authority and self regulation no longer is even marginally acceptable.

id say huge amounts of donated cash go on “administration costs”!!!

Can we intern Chuggers on Spike Island?

A lot of charities are audited every year, so publishing these results would be the next logical step.

It is time for charity regulation. A lot of Irish charity CEO’s are on a minimum of €100k per annum. If they are on €60 to €80k per annum they get added perks like free parking and car allowances, and for some, they have the whole lot! Take Goal for instance, currently recruiting for a replacement for John O’ Shea, retired after 35 yrs service, and was on 100k per annum. If you are making a life and career choice to serve a charity as a CEO, you should be paid a maximum of 50k per annum. It galls me when charities put out their begging bowls, claiming no support from the HSE and yet their CEO’s are raking in a 100k per annum!

The other problem with Irish charities is they are generally headed up by burnt out individuals from the commercial sector, or worse still individuals with an airy fairy Ph.D. in abstract areas such as therapy and absolutely no business sense, nor have every even remotely had experience in running a company. Charities claim to not be businesses, but they are, they have a core fund to operate from and pay their bills from. This core fund should not be supported by state departments, it should be based on what they can fundraise from other sources. Most charities set themselves up to provide services they claim are not being provided by the state, and as soon as they have their CHY number, they are banging on government / HSE doors for funding support.

They need to be regulated, cut their cloth to suit their bib, and remove the CEO’s on a 100k. These CEO’s would never hold down such roles in a commercial business environment. Next time some clown on Grafton street stops you or sticks a can in your face for a donation, ask him / her how much the CEO earns – if they don’t know, tell em to push off.

I’m all for the enactment of the charities bill (as is the vast majority of the charitable sector). However, it’s important to note that most charities I know are small, community based projects working at the coal face in Ireland with the most disadvantaged in our communities. It is a small minority of charities that have CEO’s with large salaries. Its a smaller amount again that work overseas! Please don’t tar all charities with the same brush.

Most small charities survive on a pittance with low wages paid to staff supported by large amounts of volunteers. All of them have received vast cuts in funding over the last few years and are expected to do far more with far less as more and more people fall into the poverty trap!

Those working in the ‘Third Sector’ have never experienced the good times of the boom when those in the private sector received great rewards Nor, in these difficult times, do they have any of the job securities of those in the public sector.

It’s also important to note that most charities are independent limited companies (they’re required to be for funding purposes) and there have their accounts audited annually. These can always be downloaded from the companies office.

I would love to see regulation and transparency in the charitable sector. Working in animal welfare I have seen the big well funded organisations do very little while pushing the work out on to the voluntary sector. I see animal welfare grants given out every year to those who do least. The situation in Sligo spca would not arise if there was accountability for the way charitable money is spent. We can’t afford Not to regulate charities.

Ur rite ^^^ very debatable !!!!

The point is that light touch regulation and voluntary codes of conduct simply do not work. Look where they got us with the banking and financial sector. The Irish charities sector has a massive annual turnover of about 6 billion euro and there is grossly inaequate accountability, transparency and governance. The Charities Act 2009 provides for this and a regulation regime which will allow the Irish public who contribute to support these thousands of charities just where the money goes or is much of it being gobbled up in admin. salaries and hefty commissions. We need to know so that we can get best value for money and support the best charities that put the taxpayers money to best use for those most in need of their support.
The point of our motion on Wednesday in the Senate is that the Charities Act 2009 which took ten years to formulate and legislate has now been left essentially dormant since it was passed by the Dail and Senate three years ago. There are no good grounds for this undue and unwise delay. We are calling on the Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter and the Government to implement and enforce the provisions of the Act without any further delay so that we can establish with certainty and clarity where all this money is going. It’s your money, so you are entitled to know. We cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the charities sector, there is too much at stake, not least the sector’s reputation and the public trust in the charities people support so generously.

Delighted to see that our call for implementation of the Charities Act is getting heard.

Unfortunately, many of the people leaving comments here, don’t seem to have noticed that it is the charity sector itself that is calling for regulation!

Nor are many aware that there is regulation for charities already – in fact most of us are regulated in exactly the same way as for-profit companies! We just feel that that is not enough.

So stop your conspiracy theories and read up on the facts. Here’s a good 2-pager to start with: http://dochas.ie/Shared/Files/2/Effective_NGOs.pdf

Hans, before you assume conspiracy theorists exist on this thread, hold up, as you do not have a clue who is posting here. Sure you have a lovely 2 pager here, written by your organisation, demonstrating self regulation. The point your missing is that self regulation and light touch monitoring by the revenue is not good enough. I have spent 15 years working in charities, am still based with a large one in Dublin, and know first hand what goes on.
Boards of organisations split due to ego meltdowns. In Dublin alone, we must have at least 3 charities providing the same services in certain fields, all demanding funding. We do not need 7 different charities caring for those who live alone for example – why don’t they come together and pool their resources and skills? – the beneficiaries can only win. Same for homeless services, loads of organisations trying to do the same thing and banging on the same doors for funding.
It has to stop. The only thing that separates these variations of the same charities are ego’s and personal differences. We all know examples of board splits that result in another new charity because one of the directors has thrown their toys out of the pram.

Your lovely power-point presentation is just that – it is regulated and monitored by no one except yourself.

Enforcing the act will do little as the following needs to be addressed also:

Ireland needs a set of standards to be set for Irish charities, similar to the UK. When standards in areas such as governance are attained, they your funding is released to you, if it is to come from the state.
Establish some form of legislation to monitor and make accountable, specialist fundraising experts and companies – so many are now running buses of people around the country from every major city on a weekly basis, it’s becoming a joke – cities full of professional chuggers!!!
Charities are supposedly Not For Profit – so if there is a surplus at year end it needs to be invested into the actual services – this is not happening – it is being squirrelled away into holding accounts, and are not declared to auditors.
Remember! – An auditor can only issue a certificate which confirms the data presented to it by the client / charity – board – squirrel accounts are hidden and kept out of current cash flow and deposit accounts that transact daily business.
Charities do not report on every envelope that arrives from the 4 corners of the country – yet a trader selling mars bars, has to record every single bar that was sold.
When you see the major charities reporting that admin costs and salaries makes up 70 to 80% of their overheads, you know that someone is doing very well indeed especially if salary costs are running to 500k per annum with a core team of 8 to 12 staff.
The Bill was finalised in 2009 – in it’s current format it’s a lovely piece of research and cost a bomb to prepare, but it is unenforceable, that is why it has sat on a shelf since 2009, no other reason.

What most successful charities fail to realise, is that their very success paints them as an obvious target. The socially skilled con man, or woman, is automatically tuned to hone in on these people. A different breed indeed.

We welcome the regulation of charities and the Charities Act…

Hans the only reason some charities have come together under the wheel for example, to push for regulation, was to try and ensure the English charities who have set up here, were in some way disadvantaged.

it was realised that polished well organised and efficient English charities, who have been regulated for years, would wipe the floor with them. Such weakness can be demonstrated by the fact that the usual suspects in the charity arena in Dublin can’t even be bothered to devise a set of standards for Ireland, they have to look at the UK, PQASSO, comes to mind to guide them. PQASSO will be chopped, changed squeezed and given a haircut in order to stick it out there as monitoring tool for the HSE or Revenue, when in fact it is a round piece of wood forcing it’s way into a square hole.
I attend CEO breakfasts regularly in Ireland, even though I am not one, but the closest thing our organisation has to one, and it makes me want to throw up when I see how many clowns and self patting morons we have working in this industry. I went into the charities sector to help those who needed someone to look out for them, in my particular field, and now 15 years later I can see so many who have failed in the commercial world now passing themselves off as the next Mother Theresa. The amount of waffle out-there is so overcoming, that I have cancelled my membership with some of this organisations and refuse to attend anymore waffle seminars. I know I can sleep at night – I earn 35k per annum, and get around our centres in the city on a bicycle.Some of these I meet turn up in suits worth thousands, cars that need to be parked and ipads hanging from their fancy Louis Vitton handbags. I don’t care what anyone says – there is a recession here since end of 2007, and some CEO’s of charities have ridden the storm well. When you think about the amount of businesses that have collapsed in the past 4 years, constantly in the media, and not a dickiebird from the charities sector – sure some admin roles went here and there, but not one CEO fell of their perch due to cutbacks. You see the squirrel accounts kicked in, when times got tough.