International terrorist or criminal organisations could be shielding their activities by setting themselves up as charities in this State, Mr Noel Ahern, Minister of State for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs warned yesterday.
The lack of regulation for charities meant that Ireland could become a haven for terrorist groups, embezzlers or money launderers, he said.
Mr Ahern was speaking as he opened a three-month public consultation phase on the regulation of charities.
He said he hoped to be in a position to introduce new regulations next year which would include a register for charities and a statutory body to oversee the sector.
Ms Rady Redmond, of the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, said concerns had been raised since the September 11th attacks that terrorist groups could be using charitable mechanisms to shield their activities.
Because of these concerns, a UN Security Council monitoring committee has already been in touch with the Department of Foreign Affairs seeking information about this initiative.
Mr Ahern said people raising money on behalf of charities had no legal obligation to declare how much they had collected or what they had spent the money on.
"Basically they could be passing on 99 per cent of what they collect, or just one per cent."
He said it was "open season" for the abuse of charitable status and fraud. Modern fundraising methods such as selling tokens like flowers or lapel pins did not even need a Garda permit, he pointed out.
People had also expressed "huge concerns" to him about professional fundraisers. They could be collecting for the homeless one day, the blind the next and something else the day after, Mr Ahern said.
He said he would like to see the publication of a league table of charities, so that people could see exactly where the money was being spent.
Religious organisations could be affected by the new legislation if they had charitable status. If the new rules called for information on the disclosure and disposal of assets, then religious charities would have to comply with this.
Some 6,000 charities have charitable tax exemption status from the Revenue Commissioners but this is not a regulatory system. "The biggest problem might be with those (charities) that you mightn't even know about," Mr Ahern said.
