Benefacts had 'little engagement' with department ahead of funding cut
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The company behind Ireland’s biggest database on non-profits says it was the last to know its State funding was to be cut.
Civil servants at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER) held meetings that did not include representation from Benefacts, the managing director of the company has claimed.
This was, Patricia Quinn said, completely contrary to an agreement that had been signed between the company and DPER. She has also said she only found out about those meetings from Freedom of Information requests.
As well as requiring Benefacts to comply with the Code of Practice for the Governance of State Bodies, the agreement provided for “a highly structured scheme of communications including meetings” of a cross-departmental Project Advisory Committee chaired by an official of DPER.
But, she said, aside from routine correspondence and meetings to monitor expenditure and process grant payments, there was - contrary to the agreement - “little engagement” between the department and Benefacts after April 2019.
This was the last time Benefacts managers were invited to attend part of a meeting of the Project Advisory Committee. She said: “Thereafter an unknown number of meetings of that committee were held to which we were not invited.
“No records of meetings were shared. Members of the committee - whose members included State bodies with which Benefacts had a working relationship - were specifically asked to withhold the fact that meetings were being held and the matters under discussion from the company.
“We subsequently learned of these matters through successive FOI requests.”
She also said all requests to speak to Minister Michael McGrath received “no response”. However, since the decision was taken to shut down Benefacts, engagement with DPER has been “exhaustive”.
Ms Quinn's comments come as the Social Democrats have called for the decision to slash Benefacts' funding to be investigated. Joint-leader of the party, Catherine Murphy TD, last week called for the Public Accounts Committee to examine the decision.
As a result of the decision Benefacts, which the State spent €6.5m helping set up and run, will close on February 14.
Its website, which provides a publicly available centralized database of detailed information on 20,695 non-profits as well as the State’s €7.4bn in grants to 2,457 non-profits and a breakdown of who gets what from the National Lottery will no longer be publicly available.