Scouting Ireland is both a company limited by guarantee (clg) and a registered charity. Scout Groups are the members of Scouting Ireland, and they set its direction through their active participation in General Meeting.
The Board of Directors are responsible for overseeing good governance within the organisation between General Meetings. The Board may have up to thirteen members, ten of whom are appointed by election at General Meeting and up to three others may be co-opted by the Board to fill specific skills gaps.
Link to details of Board Members
Work at National Level is driven either by Board Sub-Committees or by the CEO via a number of Departments. Each Department may be managed by a volunteer or a member of the paid staff, although to date the appointed manager for each Department is actually a member of the paid staff.
Each Department has a Core Team and may establish a number of Project Teams, these teams may comprise of volunteers and /or paid staff.
In preparation for the EGM in October 2018 when a new Constitution was proposed and agreed to, the Governance Review Group prepared this supporting paper:
In March 2019 the Board issued these two documents:
In August 2019 the board issued the following document:
There appear to have been many staff changes since then, and at time of writing there appears to be a significant number less staff than prior to Covid. Information on the current Department Structures and who is managing them is unavailable on the company website, although this page does provide a number of contact email addresses.
This document issued in June 2022 and it lists the Project Teams in place at that time.
Voluntary organisations today are highly regulated, this puts the onus on the Board and CEO to be fully accountable for how the organisation conducts its affairs. That said, Scouting remains a voluntary movement of and for young people, supported primarily by Adult Volunteers at all levels. Inclusive decision-making is essential to ensure quality decisions that are informed by the views and experiences of all of those involved and to enable the successful delivery of our educational and developmental objectives. In addition to the items mentioned in the link, it is worth noting that General Meetings of the company and Scouters Conferences, if they were to be organised appropriately, could become effective ways of providing for inclusive decision making at National Level.