National Volunteering Strategy: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-24 ============================================================ Joe Flaherty (FF), Nominated by the Taoiseach I will sound very inadequate now because I cannot quote Muhammad Ali or Churchill. I will venture on as best I can. I am delighted this topic is down for discussion today. The bedrock of this country has been volunteerism down through the years. That spirit of volunteerism is the one thing that sets us apart from every other country. Many people have rightly mentioned the issues with Garda vetting and getting people approved. The flip side of that is when we were not so strict on it, we can look at the sins of our past where many people were violated and many young people in particular were taken advantage of. We have to balance that. Anything we can do to streamline the process and make it easier is very welcome. We have a number of very good success stories in Longford. We have the Longford Volunteer Centre where Gerry Smyth is the main man. He is supported by Bronwyn Slevin, Verona Gray and Oleksandra Kurova. They do fantastic work. They held their volunteer awards recently and it was great to see the many people across the county who were honoured, including Pauline Flood, Sadia Butt and Tom Cunningham who is involved in under-age soccer and probably spends more time at that pitch than he does with his wife – that is probably why he is so happy. Any time I go to the pitch he is there anyway. It is fantastic. You see people who have dedicated their lives. When I was preparing for this, I thought of Ray Grehan from Edgeworthstown. Ray is profoundly deaf but no matter what event or social event is on in Longford, Ray is there, larger than life. He is a fantastic big build of a man. He volunteers and he is a stalwart at Longford Town football matches. He never misses one. It is very much his passion. He has raised a young family with his wife and she sees the value of volunteerism for Ray. It is people like that who are really the standout people in this sphere. We probably do not celebrate those people enough and we need to do more. The awards night we had in Longford was very good but these people need recognition nationally. The President is likely to have an event for volunteers but it would not be beyond the bounds that we could have a day for volunteers in Leinster House. It is important. They do an awful lot of work that would otherwise fall back on the arms of the State to carry out. Their efforts should be acknowledged. I should mention the bad with the good. I was particularly disappointed about something recently. Many will know there was a rebranding of the ISPCA and DSPCA. They merged recently and are now known as the NSPCA. We have a fantastic Rehab group in Longford town, which operates from Redleaf House. It does fantastic work with a core group of young people. You would not meet a happier group of young people. Every time I meet them I feel invigorated and happy. They do not see my shortcomings as a politician; they see me as a human being, as a person, as a friend and someone who smiles and says "Hello" and that is brilliant. They volunteer at many things including litter picks. One thing were they did boundless volunteering was at the NSPCA national refuge centre in Keenagh, County Longford where they would go out and walk dogs, supported by their care assistants from Redleaf House. Unfortunately, they were recently notified by the national NSPCA that it will no longer be able to accommodate volunteers with additional needs at this time. That is a very disappointing turn of events. There was no input. All they had to do was bring the dogs up to the office and they were taken for a walk. I would like the Minister of State to make contact with the NSPCA. We fund that organisation. We gave it just under €1 million last year and I think we gave it €1.2 million the previous year. At a minimum, if we are funding organisations they need to sign up to the volunteerism charter that runs deep in this society. If the Minister of State could take that up with it, I would appreciate it. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-02-24/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:41+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-24