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Breen, Oonagh B. --- "Ireland: Pemsel Plus" [2010] ELECD 673; in McGregor-Lowndes, Myles; O’Halloran, Kerry (eds), "Modernising Charity Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Modernising Charity Law

Editor(s): McGregor-Lowndes, Myles; O’Halloran, Kerry

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849802505

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: Ireland: Pemsel Plus

Author(s): Breen, Oonagh B.

Number of pages: 27

Extract:

3. Ireland: Pemsel plus
Oonagh B. Breen

INTRODUCTION ­ THE DRIVERS OF CHARITABLE
CHANGE
While the essential characteristics of charitable purposes do not change, what
will satisfy those purposes changes with society . . . What is charitable is to be
determined in accordance with contemporary community values. A contempo-
rary activity may be charitable now, though it would not have been charitable
a century ago, or less . . . Rules established a century ago relating to what is
charitable need to be revisited in this light.1

The introduction of a new charity statute affords a state an opportunity
to revise its policy approach on charities and in so doing to redraw the
boundaries between the state, the market and the nonprofit sector. At its
core, the power to determine what constitutes a charitable purpose is ­
and always has been ­ a political one. As history reveals, it matters not
that definitional classification is not always to the fore of political intent
or deliberation. The Statute of Charitable Uses 1601, although primarily
intended as an accountability tool to ensure that charitable assets were
applied to charitable ends, is today best and perhaps only remembered
for its Preamble setting out the parameters of 17th-century charity.2 It is
somewhat less surprising then that history is once more repeating itself:
whereas the political motivation for new charity legislation in Ireland
springs primarily from concerns relating to transparency and account-
ability, the focus of popular, political (and most likely future legal) debate
rests on the scope of the ...