An Irish Senator has demanded the creation of a centralised public database to expose whether state funding for non-governmental organisations is reaching frontline services or being swallowed up by “chief executive salaries.”
Speaking in an interview with Gript this week, Senator Sarah O’Reilly said there needs to be “more scrutiny” over the enormous sums of public money being handed to the sector.
The Senator expressed concern that the current system lacks transparency, noting that while some organisations do “good work”, it is vital to track precisely where taxpayer funds are going.
O’Reilly said she wants clear visibility on whether money is directly benefiting those in need or simply funding the administrative apparatus of various groups.
“Is the money going to frontline services?” she asked.
“Is it dribbling down or is it getting caught up in administration, in salaries, in chief executive salaries… I think the public are entitled to that information.”
The Senator detailed the immense difficulty elected representatives face when trying to track state expenditure on NGOs, describing the process of extracting data from government departments as extremely time-consuming and deliberately obtuse.
“They have the information, we’re getting it out in dribs and drabs, but it would be great to see it all in the one location where we can have even names of chief executives and names of board members,” she said.
“I think that it shouldn’t be secretive. I think that we have an entitlement to know, and it should be very, very clear.”
She noted that she recently requested a list of the top 100 NGOs funded by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, and found that she did not recognise many of the groups or know what services they were supposedly delivering.
O’Reilly suggested that the lack of a cohesive database might be an intentional strategy by the state to avoid accountability.
“I think it is probably done on purpose so that there isn’t so much scrutiny,” she continued.
“And that’s not right. There needs to be scrutiny, there needs to be transparency, and there needs to be questions asked particularly about how much is getting to frontline services.”
When asked about the state funding of activist NGOs that campaign on contentious social issues, O’Reilly said that many of these organisations hold undue sway over government policy despite lacking grassroots support.
She pointed to the recent defeated 2024 Family and Care referendums, highlighting that groups like the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) appeared to be pushing for constitutional changes that the general public was not demanding.
“I do think that there’s undue influence over government policies with many of the NGOs,” she said.
“[There’s a view] that they have their own agendas and that the government are going to them and using them as the experts, but who funds the NGOs?”
The Senator argued that state-funded groups often present entirely one-sided narratives to the public and the media, acting as vehicles for the government’s own political objectives rather than representing ordinary citizens.
She stated that if the activist NGO sector is to exist at all, it must offer fair representation for differing viewpoints.
“The government have the right to push their own agendas, but they also have a right to be clear and transparent about where these agendas are coming from and who is behind them,” she said.
“If it’s not grassroots, it’s obviously NGO-led.”
O’Reilly warned that the funding for these groups is growing at a rapid pace, noting a fifty per cent increase in NGO expenditure within one government department alone over a four-year period.
She stressed that organisations like the NWCI do not represent her views or the views of the women she interacts with, and called for an urgent overhaul of the entire sector.
“Overall I believe that the NGO sector is spiralling nearly out of control,” she said.
“Are we feeding an NGO system? …Questions have to be asked about that and what we’re getting in return.”