Room to Improve (v2)

Genuine question. How do you square this:

I'm not having a go at Julian Benson here

with this:

just fed up of so many charitable causes being taken advantage of by those looking to feed their own ego or bank balance

because it really looks like you're having a go at him.

They did mention that the building had flats and was a pre 1963 building which is why some planing permission did not apply to it I believe.

Did any of the apt have more than 1 bed? Seems a bit mad to me to not have option of sofa bed in apts.

The big thing with CF is that the patient usually spends long spells in hospitial and if its a child then usually one parent that is with them. This is very hard on rest of children in family especially if they live far away. Obviously the other children if in school etc can't spend all time in Dublin and need their routine but nice if whole family could spend time together some weekends but you would need more than 1 bed for that.

@PARlance good catch. I didn't read the full report, just the figures in the accounts themselves. That means the salaries figure of €34,313 covers a little over 3 months of her salary and just over 2 months of the administrative assistant's so that's now a further fundraising burden in the region of €130k a year to meet those salaries (taking that 34k as 3 months of a salary bill and multiplying by 4 for a rough estimate of the salary costs for 2 FTEs) for a charity showing an average income of 180k for the two years detailed in their audited accounts.

No dount the fundraising for 2024 was a lot higher given the appearances on The Late Late Show, Claire Byrne etc. but that would be a one-off spike likely to taper away over the next couple of years. Add in the mortgage repayments, building maintenance and normal day-to-day expenses and it really does beg the question as to whether the organisation is in any way sustainable in the long term.

@Former Former Former simple enough: I can admire his desire to help others while criticising the inefficient way he's gone about it. The comment about charitable causes being taken advantage of was more of a general criticism of the charity sector in Ireland than a personal dig at Julian Benson. He's clearly a very decent man that's giving a lot of his time and leveraging his local celebrity status to help others.

My real frustration would be about the lack of power (or ineptitude) of the Charities Regulator and the lack of political will to do anything about it. The level of overlap between the 11,500+ registered charities in Ireland is wildly excessive and leads to massive amounts of waste of the donations given by the public and the grants they receive from the government purse. For a finger in the air, back of the envelope, calculation if we take the average CEO salary of one of these charities of 100k and assume we could easily halve the number of these charities (not a stretch when you consider we have over 70 charities involved in homelessness alone), that's a figure of €575m of waste on their CEO salaries alone. It's no exageration to estimate that there are billions being wasted by these overlaps and duplication of effort.

The cynic in me presumes this wastes is tolerated because so many of those on the payroll (or on the boards) of these charities are related to, (or in some other way connected to) many of our politicians. That so many of them (such as the Julian Benson CF Foundation featured in this episode of RTI) are fundraising for things that should be covered under the remit of the HSE no doubt plays a part too.

I don't think anyone is against the Ronald McDonald house.

I think their upset is McDonald's is a massive global organisation which could well afford funding the operation through profits. However they charge the parents and fund raise to cover the cost of running.....so it's a complete "lip service" there's not much charity happening.

I also think the majority are applauding Benson for the achievement of raising all that money ..and absolutely fair play to him....again it comes with an "however" was that particular property the best value for the funds...no simply because there's a lot of boxes it doesn't tick and surely someone in the organisation should have said "cool the jets" let's think about this. Though again credit where it's due, there's families availing of a service that wasn't there a year ago!

Absolutely no one is begrudging the parents and families availing of the service.

However a conversation around duplication/triplication and the rest, of charity organizations should absolutely be happening but there's not much appetite for that as they are doing the job the government should be doing. So it's not in the governments interest to bring in rules and regulations.

It's a topic beyond the scope of the thread.

Has it passed ye by that an organisation that can bring in €1 million of free construction work could possible have called in some favours to get first dibs on a few apartments?

Yes it was a nice thing to do.

Yes the families will love it.

Yes yer man is a good person.

Yes it was an objectively poor use of resources.

All these things can be true at the same time. Simply highlighting this does not make anyone a be begrudger.

If the government had spent the guts of 3mill on restoring a period property for temp accommodation for families of sick children and it didn't even have disabled access or a single parking space, you can be sure people would call it out for what it is.

"Could have"

They could have gotten 10 apartments if thats the case. Quit talking in hypotheticals. I dont know why its so hard to show examples of all these apartments they could have gotten and done up for cheaper. Loads of people on this are adamant they are out there

Of course it's hypotheticals, because it's a hypothetical scenario.

Median price for 1-bed apartment in Dublin in 2018 was <€200k, so what would a 2-bed have been, €250k maybe, being generous.

https://news.myhome.ie/property-report/myhomeie-q1-2018-property-report-in-association-with-davy-27253

So you could have gotten four 2-bed apartments for less that the cost of the one big old rambling house, with minimal renovation work required.

Would that not have been dramatic enough?

It's a bit strange to promoting doing more than the minimum socially, in particular in regards to health, and complaining about the left. What you are describing is much more of a left wing ideal. Right wing health care is abysmal.

Similar memories here too. Did an entire convent once with the Da, freeing up what must have been 30-40 pitch pine windows and replacing sash cords in every one during a silent retreat. Some craic.
Have 4 sash windows here and the cost of replacement are scary, considering using the knowledge gained above and buying in the component parts for a DIY job from these folk.

'A 1lb of clouts. please'. 😁

Sash Window Components | Chiltern Timber

That is utter insanity.