Ged Nash: Decision to pull plug on Benefacts should be reviewed immediately | Business Post

‘The decision of Michael McGrath, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, to discontinue funding to this small, specialised data analytics company raises serious questions about this government’s commitment to transparency and genuine reform in the wider public service.’ Picture: Fergal Phillips, Ireland will lose an online resource that has transformed the transparency and accessibility of Ireland’s non-profit sector.

Co-funding from philanthropic bodies allowed Benefacts to produce reports and other services targeted on the vast non-profit sector itself. For the first time, anybody anywhere had ready access to current, trustworthy and comparable data on Ireland’s €14 billion non-profit sector – a sector that, according to Benefacts own directory of State funding, attracts at least €7.4 billion in taxpayers’ money annually.

Until recently, the raw data about the sector was scattered in dozens of regulatory and funding silos across government. Benefacts broke new ground, using an innovative data mining approach to produce a coherent stream of information, thereby progressing the transparency of the sector in a new and radical way. It shone a light where none previously existed.

That was the previous Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Paschal Donohoe, paying credit to Benefacts on the launch of its first annual report on the sector in 2017. I could not have put it better myself. Benefacts State Funders Directory – including, for the first time, evidence of where the proceeds of the tickets we buy in the National Lottery are being spent – on its own should justify the annual €1.5 million cost of the service, which is insignificant in the context of overall public spending in this area of €7.4 billion.

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