Most of the volunteers recruited for a new project to help children begging on the streets of Dublin were removed from ISPCC rosters last year because they would not sell £300 worth of tickets for the organisation, it emerged yesterday.
All the original 14 volunteers on the Leanbh project wrote to the ISPCC twice last year to warn the organisation they could not meet the requirement to raise the money in addition to doing four-hour shifts on the streets contacting children.
Their views were rejected, and a volunteer, who spoke on the Joe Duffy radio programme on RTE yesterday, said she received a phone call telling her not to turn up for work in the project unless she had money in her pocket.
The manager of the project, Ms Annette McCartan, said on the programme she was "absolutely certain nothing would have been phrased like that" but "we would have been saying to volunteers can you use the time to, you know, get this task achieved?"
A former Childline volunteer has told The Irish Times there was widespread anger among volunteers for most of last year over the demand that they sell £100 tickets.
The organisation had lost a substantial number of volunteers as a result.
The volunteer, Ms Maeve Ryan, says she had a meeting with Mr Cian O Tighearnaigh, the ISPCC chief executive, and Mr Paul Gilligan, its psychologist, on October 30th to outline her objections to selling the tickets.
She says it was suggested she might run tea mornings and other activities to raise the £300.
The Leanbh volunteer said she had written to the national executive of the ISPCC in November outlining her objections but did not receive a reply until last week.
The reply suggested she had not understood the fundraising commitment in being a volunteer.
She said she was angry that "my ideas were dismissed" and she could not understand why a child care organisation would let 14 experienced people go because of £300.
Ms McCartan confirmed she had refused two requests from the 14 volunteers to meet them as a group because "everybody is an individual, everybody has their own issues and difficulties".
She confirmed the volunteers in question were "really, really good" at their work.
Ms McCartan stressed that the requirement to raise £300 no longer existed, though volunteers are still expected to fundraise.
Ms Ryan disputed an ISPCC statement last Friday that only volunteers who objected to fundraising as a concept were derostered. The volunteers did not object in principle to fundraising, she said - they objected to having to sell three £100 tickets.
The ISPCC last night refused to comment on Ms Ryan's complaints saying it needed "some reasonable time to absorb the large volume of publicity generated over the past number of days and to review the many issues raised in a considered manner".