"the highly competitive world of the homelessness charities!"

A large number of Charities aren't really charities in the sense of what many people think a charity is. For example, every Catholic and Church of Ireland diocese in the country is a registered charity, and often they will have numerous registrations for various aspects of what they do. Many Community Councils are registered charities. Every secondary school in my town is a registered charity as are the likes of scout groups.

Whilst people setting up individual homeless charities may have good intentions, I also can't help but wonder if many of them exist simply because of a conflict between people running another charity. That fine great Irish tradition of "the Split"
 
Brendan Burgess said:
Would we say the same about discussion forums?

No need for boards.ie, , politics.ie, reddit, askaboutmoney and hundreds of others.

why not have just one?

Brendan
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You're asking us to compare apples with oranges there, Brendan.

The various Discussion Fora that you mention cover a massive range of topics, whereas the 57 varieties of Homelessness Industry organisations cover only one social issue!
 
odyssey06 said:
There's no need for 75, if they have a role to play, needs serious rationalisation and clarity on scope and clear boundaries on being funded by government to deliver services and lobbying government for more funding from charitable donations.
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So instead of 75 charities, we would regulate them and require them to justify themselves?

So we would have a few hundred civil servants regulating charities and employees of charities doing compliance work instead of dealing with the homeless?

It could be a bit like the credit union sector. The government might encourage them to merge and rationalise. But if someone wants to set up a charity tomorrow to help homeless trans people, that is fine. They should not be told "Sorry, go to the Peter McVerry Trust. No need for a new group."
 
Brendan Burgess said:
So instead of 75 charities, we would regulate them and require them to justify themselves?

So we would have a few hundred civil servants regulating charities and employees of charities doing compliance work instead of dealing with the homeless?

It could be a bit like the credit union sector. The government might encourage them to merge and rationalise. But if someone wants to set up a charity tomorrow to help homeless trans people, that is fine. They should not be told "Sorry, go to the Peter McVerry Trust. No need for a new group."
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So what rigorous analysis did you carry out before arriving at that figure of a "few hundred civil servants" Brendan?

(The current staffing of the CHARITIES REGULATORY AUTHORITY which is responsible for "regulating the charity sector in the public interest" is 48. And it has 11,400 charities to oversee - including the many charities in the homelessness sector.)
 
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Shirazman said:
You're asking us to compare apples with oranges there, Brendan.

The various Discussion Fora that you mention cover a massive range of topics, whereas the 57 varieties of Homelessness Industry organisations cover only one social issue!
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But if you look at the work of many of the approved housing bodies you can see that is not just about housing.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
So instead of 75 charities, we would regulate them and require them to justify themselves?

So we would have a few hundred civil servants regulating charities and employees of charities doing compliance work instead of dealing with the homeless?

It could be a bit like the credit union sector. The government might encourage them to merge and rationalise. But if someone wants to set up a charity tomorrow to help homeless trans people, that is fine. They should not be told "Sorry, go to the Peter McVerry Trust. No need for a new group."
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What civil servants are in charge of disbursement of the €116 million? OR are they just giving money to anyone who asks?
And btw I'm not 100% clear if that figure includes local council spend and grants.

If government - central and local - are using these organisations to deliver services then the disbursement should be approached from the perspective of economies of scale. And if these bodies want state funds in that manner, they should be regulated in how they lobby wrt government policy.

Anyone who wants to setup a charity tomorrow is of course free to do so, but should receive zero incentive \ fundings from government.

No other funds given out such as grants to those 'setting up a charity tomorrow' or in penny packets to smaller charities etc etc which is only encouraging this self-defeating competition between charities.
 
Shirazman said:
So what rigorous analysis did you carry out before arriving at that figure of a "few hundred civil servants" Brendan?
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The principle is that we can overregulate a sector and make it very inefficient.

When we interfere too much, we end up employing public servants to regulate it and the charities employ staff to talk to them.

There has to be a balance.

I would prefer to give €50m to the Peter McVerry Trust for a homelessness project than to the local authorities.

Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
The principle is that we can overregulate a sector and make it very inefficient.
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We don't have to regulate. We just have to defund. Many of the advocacy "charities" only exist courtesy of large dollops of public money.

Brendan Burgess said:
When we interfere too much, we end up employing public servants to regulate it and the charities employ staff to talk to them.
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See above.

Brendan Burgess said:
There has to be a balance.

I would prefer to give €50m to the Peter McVerry Trust for a homelessness project than to the local authorities.
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But he would spend a good chunk of it on advocacy of a higher tax take to fund yet more projects. You sure you want to spend your money campaigning for more taxes on your good self?
 
Shirazman said:
(The current staffing of the CHARITIES REGULATORY AUTHORITY which is responsible for "regulating the charity sector in the public interest" is 48. And it has 11,400 charities to oversee - including the many charities in the homelessness sector.)
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But that's only one Deepartmint. What about Social Welfare, other bits of Finance, like the Tax-man and the VAT-man to use old-fashioned terms for those functions, the OPW, wages, HR, etc? For every employee of the Charities Regulator, add 3 maybe 4 in other Deepartmints.
 
Right Winger said:
But he would spend a good chunk of it on advocacy of a higher tax take to fund yet more projects.
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I doubt it.

But even if he uses the money to appoint a Head of Advocacy, it's not calling for more tax on me for the craic. It's for improving services to the homeless.

Brendan
 
T McGibney said:
many of us would have expressed the same sentiment about Inner City Helping Homeless (ICHH).
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Was all the money given to them wasted?

Presumably they gave some service for the taxpayers' money they were given.

Would I prefer to give the money to a genuine charity or to a local authority? My default would be to the genuine charity, but I would not be ideological about it. If a charity has a bad record I would stop funding it.

Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
Was all the money given to them wasted?
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Enough of it was. A number of its most vulnerable beneficiaries also got seriously sexually assaulted as a result.
Brendan Burgess said:
Presumably they gave some service for the taxpayers' money they were given.
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That's a low bar.
Brendan Burgess said:
If a charity has a bad record I would stop funding it.
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When the State endows so many charities with taxpayers money, the freedom to stop funding them is taken out of our hands.
 
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My grandmother (in her mid-90s) recalls that the big charity campaign of the early 1940s was to give every child in Dublin a pair of shoes as so many were barefoot even in winter. Well-off people donated and the very poor got shoes.

Some social problems do have a solution!
 
NoRegretsCoyote said:
My grandmother (in her mid-90s) recalls that the big charity campaign of the early 1940s was to give every child in Dublin a pair of shoes as so many were barefoot even in winter. Well-off people donated and the very poor got shoes.

Some social problems do have a solution!
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That was an economic problem. We've solved most of those problems. What's left are the social problems. One of the symptoms of social problems is economic deprivation but solving the underlying social problems is much harder than just throwing money at it.
 
From what I recall from reading their annual reports, Focus and PMVT had each over 100m worth of properties which they bought mainly under the state capital funding scheme which guaranteed their borrowings.
They each spend between 22-30m per annum on salaries, I think they have around 1500 staff between them (including social workers).
They both get around 80% or so of funding directly or indirectly from state - effectively most of the funding for councils to homeless executive in turn is paid over to them to do the actual work. And then HSE and various government depts issue other funding.

To some extent it absolves the state of some of the blame for mismanagement when things do go wrong (think Ballymun flats having no working lifts for years). PMVT for example didn't look good when it transpired that its staff had visited during a week in a flat where a dead body was present.
This both shifts some accountability & might prevent some level of duplication in service provision. Its harder for PMVT to howl that the homeless executive services are not fit for purposes if they themselves are provisioning some of those services.
 
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