IRELAND’S VOLUNTEERS carried out 425,000 hours of voluntary work last year – equating to over €9 million of work that was carried out for free, figures released this morning claim.

Volunteer Ireland released the figures to mark National Volunteering Week, which takes place this week, and called for more comprehensive national data to be compiled on the level of work done by some people for free.

Chief executive Yvonne McKenna said over 11,000 people had registered at Volunteer Ireland’s 22 centres across the country last year, offering hours which – if costed based on the average industrial wage – meant their work would have cost €9.2 million otherwise.

McKenna believes this is just “the tip of the iceberg”, however, and believes a larger number of people are giving up free time for worthy causes without any records being taken.

The 2006 census was the first to ask adults if they volunteered, with one in six Irish adults saying they volunteered on a regular basis, but no similar questions were included in the 2011 census.

“Since 2006 Volunteer Ireland has seen a dramatic increase in the number of people registering to volunteer at its centre,” McKenna said, saying registrations at its centres doubled in the first year after the economic crisis.

This shift in Irish people’s attitudes to volunteering is going widely undocumented and unnoticed. If we do not measure the level of volunteering occurring, we risk undervaluing the vast impact of volunteers to Irish society.

Data collected by the association indicated that 43 per cent of volunteers gave up their time because of a personal belief for their particular cause, while an organisation’s values and principles, and the experience a person gained, also ranked highly among the reasons.