Sir, - I read with interest your report on organisations with charitable tax status (The Irish Times, January 23rd). I know the media have for many years championed the need for a clear public record of charities and I support fully this view.
It is unfortunate that yet another "Irish solution to an Irish problem" has cast aspersion on the legitimate efforts of voluntary bodies because the Government has failed, for three-quarters of a century, to put in place a proper public register for charities.
Yet worse is the fact that a previous government was responsible in 1992 for an attack on one of our most important and most vulnerable of charitable companies during the earliest years of its existence, resulting in a direct loss to the charity of £7,000 and ultimately to cessation of its activities.
I know, because I began the work which eventually after seven years led to the formation and incorporation of the company Traideireann (later renamed "Fair Trade Eireann") and achieved charitable status from the Revenue Commissioners.
Had I taken the story of what our Government did to the so called "gutter press" in England I am sure they would not have turned their backs. However, the Irish media are so hung up on finding rotten apples in the charity movement that not one journalist has bothered to expose what our Government did. Where is your shame? - Yours, etc.,
Richard Leech, Abbeyfeale, Co Limerick.