There is an old expression to the effect that one ought “never bite the hand that feeds.”
I often deploy it to no visible effect when one or another of my dogs decides that my fingers are part of the offering of food. I might as well be talking to the wall, of course, and I have accepted it with equanimity as the advancing years have rendered their canines less lethal.
Their lack of consideration for my fingers echoes a similar failure on the part of the “Non Governmental” sector in Ireland to imbibe the lessons of the old saying about being careful about pushing one’s benefactors too far.
The amount of your taxes that goes to shore up what is now a significant part of the non-productive economy – accounting for close to 7% of public spending – has expanded massively over the past 20 years.
That has not stopped the NGOs from demanding more and more of your cash, mostly in order to pay themselves for sitting around offices “advocating” and generally acting as though the elected government was part of their staff, and us citizens errant children to be constantly scolded and kept in line.
The cheek of some of them can be quite astounding. While the reaction of most people here to the Ukrainian refugee crisis last year was to offer unsolicited charity, many of the NGOs were like people who queue up overnight outside chain stores to nab knockdown electronic goods, although free stuff would be more of an analogy in their case.
Thus, if you go back over media reports from 2022 you will find numerous examples of NGOs saying that they needed more cash to “solve” the accommodation problem, and the integration problem, and the education problem, and all the other problems.
Well, they got the extra dosh. And they have more people employed to wet their beaks with it. You may judge for yourselves whether or not they have solved any of the problems.
Although in fairness, that would be a big ask of people sitting behind a desk in the centre of Dublin while the problem has mostly been franchised out to communities that the same NGOs spend a lot of their time attacking as “Nazis”.
That aside, I have decided to take not one of the migrancy/human rights businesses to task, but to focus on one of the climate activist groups who yesterday emailed TDs and Senators basically demanding that they get more money because “there remains a lack of Government funding to build NGO capacity.”
Really? Well then, one can only assume that the group who sent this begging letter – Friends of the Earth Ireland – has fallen on hard times and might actually need a few extra bob to keep the climate change Aspidistra flying.
However, you would be erring in that view because a cursory look at their books tells me that their income and staffing levels have almost tripled over the past four years.
In 2018, they employed an average of 4 full time staff, and had an income of €241,506. In 2021, that had increased to 11 full time employees, and an income of €624,785.
Far from being starved of state funding, during this period of expansion, Friends of the Earth have managed to more than double their direct take from the Irish taxpayer – an increase of more than 150%, in fact.
They also get money that is recycled through other NGOs and money from the European Commission, either directly via Interreg or through monies that come indirectly from the Commission via Friends of the Earth Europe. They no longer itemise the recycled NGO funding in their public accounts, but in 2018 they received €12,500 from Trócaire and The Wheel.
The biggest increase in funding has been from the woke capitalist foundations. In 2018, they got €42,391 from the Tomar Trust, and in 2021 they dungareed €222,738 from that sector but their accounts do not tell us which generous funders were behind that.
In fairness, it does perhaps justify the €3,025 paid to Emma Lane Spollen for her “review of the philanthropic funding landscape.” Which is greenish in hue it would seem.
Emma is now working for the Ukraine Civil Forum, which is an Immigrant Council of Ireland gig I believe, and apart from running her own company which is devoted to all things related to “social change,” has been CEO of the above mentioned Tomar Trust, as well as the Tony Ryan Trust and One Foundation. Previously, she worked for Tusla. Suffice to say, these are not people who spend their spare time “helping.”
That aside, what do Friends of the Earth spend your and your millionaire co-funders money on? Well, as with all the other NGOs, the biggest amount goes on their own wages and other staff costs. That amounted to 61% of their spending in 2021. Indeed, as with other NGO firms, as they have expanded and as their take from the taxpayer has grown, the % they spend on their own wages has increased from 49% in 2018.
The hook on which they are hanging their plea for more of your cash is that they have a brand new report which, ironically you might chuckle to yourself, claims to contain “practical recommendations” that will “go a long way in giving families access to cheaper, cleaner energy and warmer, healthier homes.”
I doubt that very much to be honest. What would lead to cheaper, healthier, maybe even happier homes – although I’ll leave that for the philosophers among you – is having far fewer of these NGOs and their thousands of employees in safe, non-productive jobs siphoning off billions of € that could be better deployed in practical ways.
Particularly when one bears in mind that not a few of the main serial beneficiaries of all this nonsense have their fingers in quite a few of the pies.