Why have we so many housing "charity" quangos?

There are 450 (yes, 450) Approved Housing Bodies in Ireland.

The six biggest have assets of €2.8 billion

Clúid, Respond, Tuath, Oaklee Housing, Circle Voluntary Housing Association and Co-operative Housing Ireland all do pretty much exactly the same thing, but all have a CEO, offices, development managers, CFO's etc, etc, etc.

Why? Ignoring the other 444, why have we six huge "charities" all doing exactly the same thing, wasting millions of euros on duplicate staff, offices etc? Worse still, they are all competing with each other for the same sites.

What is the purpose of all this duplication?

At least you're admitting that yours weren't 😉

Ah Renko you know those are tendered for. But I do agree there is huge money wasted on those consultancy firms.

Which charity do you work for that you're worried about losing your job if charities were told to become financially efficient?

Mergers and Acquisitions happen all of the time in business, often with a goal of reducing overheads and and increasing efficiencies. So why shouldn't this happen in charities where there are significant overlaps?

Apparently that's DEFINITELY not the case 😉

If you want to be rich set up a religion or a charity.

That's pretty much exactly how the HSE is run.

Sure you're no-one in South Dublin unless you're on the board of at least one charity...

I'd agree that most of these charities mean well, were started with the best of intentions and are simply trying to provide services that the state has failed to for decades. However, the duplication of effort and personalities (i.e. vested interests) involved mean they're preposterously inefficient.

There's a great role for the Charities Regulator here imo:

Existing charities should be incentivised to merge (perhaps via some kind of competitive process where the best performing charity in a particular area e.g. social housing, poverty alleviation, cancer care or mental health services etc. gets 100% of government funding for that area of work for the year - effectively forcing the others to either merge into that best run charity or go to the wall) and no new charity numbers should be issued if an existing charity already covers the aims of that charity or it's within their skillset/domain of expertise to take on the task.

I can't see this ever happening - too many politicians wives and broadcasters boyfriends make a lucrative living out of our charity / NGO sector for it to ever gain enough media or political attention for them to do be forced to do the right thing.

Some degree of overlap...

Overlap? Sure they are barely touching.

I spent a few years (10-15 years ago) doing grant audits of large numbers of domestically funded and EU funded NGO’s.

As a direct result of this I will never ever ever give one cent to these organisations.

What the financial accounts don’t show is the line item breakdown of costs, as they are just categorised under ‘travel, admin, staff costs’ etc.

The over spends on travel for (un)necessary high end travel is honestly shocking. The staffing ratios, salaries and work culture is equally shocking. The claimable staff expenses, per diems and external consultants costs are shocking.

They are a gravy train and very little of the very generous budget/grant are actually available to the end cause.

Age Action is heavily involved in advocacy and support for elderly and does not provide accommodation.

Alone will provide accommodation working in conjunction with local authorities, social housing for senior citizens.

Because a monopoly in business such as supermarket means there is no competition and prices would shoot up.

Competition isn't required in charity, just a good service for those that the charity was created to support. The service is diluted when funds are spent inefficiently on duplication such as office rent, salaries and other administrative expenses, which could easily be removed by merging charities that provide very similar services / supports.

Why competition not required in a charity? If you are the one designated charity to provide a service where is the free market incentive to ensure value for money and that the charity is providing the best service possible for the best value for money possible?

Also, why would prices for the service a charity provides not shoot up if they were designated at the only ones allowed to provide it? Seems to be that they could very easily price gouge in that situation.

It hilarious how often people let slip that they think charities are the same as businesses, and yet if you ever dare point out the "business" of homelessness you will get jumped on by the mob.

Loads of them , from the nominal charges in the various community cafes up the charges on top of rent in some of the housing associations, I think there is an NGO providing education in Dublin that will charge for some of its course depending on your means.