Rose Conway-Walsh: Presses Progress Ireland on Donor Transparency

Thank you and thank you for being here today and you'll forgive me I have never heard of Progress Ireland before so I just want to ask you a couple of questions to give the committee a better understanding of who you are. Now you say you're independent and non-partisan and your funders have no influence on your policies and obviously we would welcome that so donations from your contributors over 5,000 are named on the website which is Metta Collison Brothers Smiths Toys and Amazon amongst others. So are you able to say who your largest donator is, donor is and how much? So we disclose our policy on funding just to give some context for how we're coming from on our funding. If you go back to the start of the overview, we have a policy on funding and we have a policy on funding and we have a policy on funding and we have a policy on funding. If you go back to the start of the organisation so my co-founders and I so we felt like there's these ideas needed to be introduced into Ireland and on the one hand thought they're important secondly we felt that there wasn't there was a shortage of organisations who yeah no I'm just asking you just in terms of your largest donor who is that because I've limited time here and I have a couple of other questions. So our policy on donations that we disclose all of our material donors we don't disclose the exact amount because and we don't accept donations for people who direct benefit directly from what we do and I guess if you're asking what is the euro amount it's simply it doesn't work to donate to list the euro amount of every donor because that you're trying to fund the thing on an ongoing basis year-on-year donors wouldn't necessarily be happy. So just your largest donor so you can tell but obviously your largest donor will be declaring it somewhere because obviously you're open and you're transparent organisation in what you do I just think it's very important that there's transparency particularly for what you're doing in terms of trying to influence government policy and that goes across the board that's the way I think we should always operate but your proposals on exempting small-scale units from planning permission that closely mirrors the policies that are promoted by the Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation now these are two right-wing libertarian organisations funded by Charles Koch but did you derive the ideas that you have from those organisations and how do you just explain the overlap there yeah first of all I'm aware of the Cato institutions existence I've actually never heard of this other one so I'll first kind of mention some context that particular policy has been implemented in several countries I think the latest one I've seen in the news is Mayor Mamdani in New York who describes himself as a socialist so I wouldn't think it'd be fair to characterize at the outset this sort of policy as a right-wing one as you described it the kind of other question I correct me if I'm wrong is what do you agree there's an over overlap with the Cato Institute in terms of what you're proposing if if you're correct in saying the Cato Institute said that there should be units built in people's gardens then yes and it would also be an overlap with Mayor Mamdani right the government of Portland in the US and Seattle Los Angeles I can list it the government of Germany and so on right but so you're saying an overlap but you don't know what the Cato Institute basically do or what they propose you're saying there isn't any connection between what you're doing yourself so that's correct in relation to this okay great thank you now in a document reported by Dublin Enquirer Progress Ireland referred to Ireland has been highly conformist and is more prone to the deference and to deference to elite or expert consensus that are then our British counterparts what did you mean by that just just explain that just think we thought that Ireland is a country that again we're looking at what we're trying to do is okay our MO is we're trying to connect Ireland up to ideas from overseas so how do you how do you do that like how do you persuade people in Ireland or how do you make people in Ireland see the benefit of ideas that have been tried overseas and I've attracted overseas so I we felt and we still do feel that it's really important that Ireland are like that they see that what our problems are not our own they're not unique all the places have solved them before and that we can look at what people have done in other countries and can learn from them we can learn from our European cousins and we can we can benefit from their solutions we don't have to think things through from first principles ourselves okay right I'd only just ask you you said that progress Ireland was set up because you believe that Ireland has a lot of untapped potential and obviously I have to agree with you being a rural TD but a lot of what you have said today seems to be urban focused in locating housing developments near jobs in our urban areas for example have you done any assessment on the impact in rural areas well yeah I mean our first policy is on small units in like 80 using gardens so when we when we're thinking about 80 use okay 80 years it's been tried elsewhere like but the next question obviously is just because it's worked elsewhere it doesn't mean it's worked in Ireland it can work in Ireland so we set about sort of testing the hypothesis that this actually might be useful in Ireland so the way we did it was we sampled at random a couple of hundred several hundred anyway random air codes around the country and we tried to assess okay like on the in these air codes is there enough space is there enough is there fire access and are the rents high enough in this in this location to justify building them and so we found so we sort of expected to find that if this worked it would work maybe you know South County Dublin or something like that where rents are extremely high and there's lots of big gardens what we found is that is a very broad swath of Ireland where housing shortages are acute enough rents are high enough that you can build a unit in someone's land and it can actually be worthwhile okay I just do want to say to you I do you publish accounts your accounts for that so would that not name the donors in in in your accounts that we can see I think it's very important that we know that witnesses that are here before us in the committee influence and policy that we have real transparency around where donations are coming from you know in the same way as we all declare as politicians around here where that you know of what's done there are certain codes of practices there and standards there it's all on our website so oh it's all the donors are named on your website and how much they give no but the donors are listed on our website everyone from every material donor if we listed every single donor it would be confusing because there'd be a longer list of random names but we lasted everyone over a threshold of five five thousand euro right but you don't say how much that they give but then you say how much do you say how much it takes to run your organization and all of those figures are there are there yeah you could look that up yeah that'll be up on companies house yeah or and so it's all there yeah no that's very good and I'm not saying this to be obstructive or anything but I just think it's a it's really important that we know that so if that information is there I'm really happy that our costs are very simple there's four of us working full-time and that's it it's just yeah yeah you know we said when we started this a few years ago it was three years ago almost now and since then we built I think a very good board with secretary generals like Jim you know Chancellor of UL Bridget so we take proper governance very very seriously we have a very good team yeah and of course the my new costs the full breakdown is fully you know managed by our board and you know it isn't it isn't like you know just us managing all this money it's a very professional board they manage it I think we have like very high standards of governance as of disclosing as Sean pointed out disclosing amounts you know we take private donations from individuals and philanthropic funds we do not take public money I think we might be unique in that I'd be open to be corrected so I'm not going to put too much emphasis on that well what's your turnover I'm just not going to disclose our our turnover region of 350,000 years of my 350 year yeah that is all-inclusive like that everything's joke right thanks that gives me a much better understanding just interjections around two minutes over but I just think sorry I didn't interrupt you at all because I think everyone's entitled to ask their questions I just would be careful I suppose Judy's chair to protect the witnesses as well as our members we don't interject a sense of innuendo I think particularly if you were to compare maybe Provost Ireland likes to the IIEA another thing thanks that exists I'd not aware of a structure where individual donors are listed and I think to be fair to you you do seem to list donors that give over a certain a certain one second that we don't over a certain threshold or amount so just just maybe the innuendo that's all and I did not interrupt you for I think each members entitled to ask their questions but your time is expired thanks chair no I think it's important that we'd know and it's an opportunity for transparency these committees always are as well so thank you for that