Introducing a tax break for volunteerism “goes against the whole ethos” of being a volunteer, according to Shane Coleman.

Former Cork Mayor Mick Finn is calling for the introduction of the credit to encourage people to get involved with their communities due to a worrying post-COVID decline in volunteerism.

Cllr Finn believes action is needed to "breathe new life" into the volunteer sector – with figures suggesting the number of people getting involved in Cork alone has fallen by around one-third since the pandemic.

He is warning that the country will “pay a price” if the decline continues, with some organisations facing closure if more volunteers do not come forward.

“I have to say I regard myself as someone who volunteers quite a bit and I don't want a tax incentive from the Government,” said Shane.

“I think it goes against the ethos of volunteerism – something about it just sticks in my craw a little bit.”

Volunteers

Shane said he finds it hard to believe the latest census numbers when it comes to volunteers.

“I was highly amused, I had a check of the figures in the census and 17.5% of over-24s say they are involved in volunteerism on a regular basis,” he said.

“Now, anyone who's involved in a GAA club, in a church, in a community group, in a school, will tell you that's absolute nonsense – it’s really hard to get people.”

He said Cllr Finn’s idea is a “welcome intervention in the debate”.

“I'm not dismissing the idea but to me it just goes against the ethos of it,” he said.

“When it comes to volunteerism, I actually think it's about putting something back and not looking for something in return – for me anyway. That's what it is.

“I don't feel passionately against it, it just doesn't sit well with me.”

Tax breaks

He warned that introducing a tax break would leave the system wide open to abuse.

“I mean, I can just imagine people saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I volunteer for Kilmacud Crokes or Lucan Sarsfields or whatever and then you'll hear from the other coaches that he comes out once every two months.

“I wouldn't fancy being the club secretary having to sign them off and going, ‘Well actually, you didn't show up at training’ – I wouldn't fancy being that club secretary at all.”

Pandemic

Fellow presenter Ciara Kelly said it is “pretty much a given” that volunteerism has fallen off a cliff since the pandemic.

“You hear that from every type of community group - sports groups, school groups, the Vincent de Paul, Tidy Towns - people are saying, look, people left after the pandemic and during the pandemic and haven't come back,” she said.

“We are seeing that and we have a huge volunteer sector here. We run enormous amounts of our society off the back of the goodwill and the volunteerism of our citizens and we should show that we are grateful to them.

“That's my view. In the olden days, we didn't pay carers, we didn't acknowledge what they did, we just allowed them to step in and fill an important role.

“Volunteers, I think, do the same thing and if we need to incentivize people to get back out there and get back involved then I think we should do that because, without volunteerism, we couldn't run half of the wonderful community-based activities that we run in our schools and sports clubs and localities.

“I think giving them some tiny thing - it's not a payment, it would be some minor little thing to them to say thank you - I think is no bad thing and I think the work that they do is important and should be acknowledged as such.”

Cllr Finn also appeared on the show this morning to make his argument and you can listen back here: