Ireland – The Economic Value of the Community & Voluntary Sector

The precise monetary value of The Community and Voluntary Sector (C&V) to the Irish economy is difficult to gauge.  However some assessment of its economic value can be established through the total value of all the spending by the sector: on wages, services, facilities etc.
 
Todate the lack of data on the sector has limited the number of investigations of its economic value.  The most commonly cited source detailing the sectors economic size is a report produced in 1999 by Donoghue et al entitled ´Uncovering the Non Profit  Sector in Ireland´.  In that report, the authors seperate out the Community and Voluntary Sector from the broader non-profit sector and estimate values for its economic role.  In that report they found that the C&V sector accounted for 2.14% of GDP and 2.4% of GNP that year.  Taking these figures, the following table updates them to more recent values using national income figures from the Central Statistics Office for 2004.  In doing so, the table assumes that the proportion of GDP accounted for by the sector is the same in 2004 as in 1995.

	2004 GDP & GNP Values	Donoghue et al %s	2004 Equivalent Values
GDP	€149 billion	2.14	€3.2 billion
GNP	€124 billion	2.40	€3.0 billion

 

http://www.siptu.ie/community/EqualatWork/FileDownload,9480,en.pdf