 wet, wet, wet. And on the subject of getting some help from friends, my legacy is made up of over 90 Irish charities, including the Cancer Care West here in Donegal. And as part of my legacy month, these charities are asking us to grow our legacy by including a gift in our will. And maybe, you know, someone in the family got palliative care, maybe someone in the family got help from some other charity in some way and would like to give back. Well, this is a great opportunity. And the chairperson at my legacy is Nylo Sullivan, who joins me now on Zoom. Nylo, very good afternoon to you. Good afternoon, John. Good to be here. Tell me a little bit more about my legacy. I know now that you have this month as well, that you're calling on the government to include a vat exemption on will-making, which would be a great incentive. Just tell me a bit more about my legacy, first of all. Yeah, okay. We're an organisation, we're a charity in our own right, but made up, membership of our organisation, made up of 90 charities, mostly national, some regional charities across the country. We were established about 20 years ago, as well as by far-thinking charities back then who could see that there was a growing appetite or growing interest among the general public to support charities by way of a gift in their will. But yes, we were behind the curve in comparison to some other countries. So there's a body of work to do as well as to get the word out that leaving a gift in your will is something that pretty much anyone could do. But we weren't, not as many people in Ireland would have been doing so, as perhaps in other countries. And I suppose the work of my legacy is we come together as a group of charities and we jointly promote the idea of giving a gift in your will, and then other charities themselves will do their own individual promotion in relation to their own work as well. Yeah, but it's a great idea to act collectively. And the basis of it is brilliant in that you can decide to give whatever you like, 50, 500, 5000. I mean, that's up to the individual. But you're just saving the knowledge that it's going to really good causes. Yeah, I mean, obviously there's 19 members of the organisation and they're all listed on our website, mylegacy.ie. There's thousands of charities across the country which equally would be very receptive to receiving charity gifts in their will also. And you know, it's just about considering, I suppose when a person goes to their solicitor to make a will, I suppose the first step, of course, is to make a will. If you don't have a will, it's a very, very good idea. Every financial advisor, every solicitor, every general advisor would say it's a good thing to have a will in place, particularly if you have family or any assets or any property. So really, when you do go to make that trip to the solicitor then, to consider thinking ahead and thinking about it in advance, because solicitors don't always ask the question. So I suppose it's really important to think ahead and think, what would I like to do? Someone was saying a good example recently is that you might have three children, for example, you might decide I'm going to leave all my monies to my children. That's what a lot of people would do as a default and the charity isn't thought about. But increasingly, people are leaving maybe a percent, so maybe 33% to each of their children and then the rest, the 1% to charities of their choice. As you said, it could be a charity that supports them in their lifetime. It could be a charity that they just agree with their particular cause. It could be a charity for the environment. We know the world is in trouble, yet very few environmental charities get any bequests at all. So it's about thinking ahead into the future, a your own legacy, but also what would you like the world in the future to be like if you were to come back or if you're for your children, grandchildren, etc., etc., also. In the case of my legacy, does the person decide on one of the more than 90 charities or is the money spread out between the charities? Well, the person who's writing a charity into their will chooses whichever charity or charities that they want to put into the will. A person who includes a gift in their will for charities normally puts two to three charities in. Rarely you'd see just one charity going in, but having said that, I've seen up to 30 charities being included in some wills. It really depends on the individual, their cause, their interests, their passion. How much they have to leave is another factor. Sometimes single people or people with kids without children, they tend to leave more to more charities sometimes as well. My legacy as well this month, you're calling on the government to include a VAT exemption on will making. This is if there's an amount being left to charity, which is again a great idea. Yeah, it's quite a smart idea, we think, because it means that the solicitor will then say to the client coming in, look, if you do decide, if you do want to include a gift in your will, a charitable gift in your will, there's a VAT reduction. So it means that the solicitors are automatically bringing it into the equation, into the discussion. Some solicitors are very, very good and they do this as a matter of course, they will have a checklist of items that they would go through and they would suggest to their clients, ask the question, would they like to consider leaving a gift in their will? If they do that, it's considerable the difference. But we think including the VAT, reducing the VAT on the cost of wills where there's a charitable request included, will make that a default situation for our solicitors. And we know from research in the UK that could increase the numbers to just probably one in 20 people in Ireland at the moment leave a gift in their will. So that could, we think, increase that to maybe two, even three out of 20 would consider doing so in the future. Yeah, absolutely. We know the average gift, the average values of gifts and wills are quite considerable when you look at drill down into the stats as well. It's anywhere from 25 to 35,000 is the average. Now there's, there's millions in there and there's, there's smaller gifts in there and everything in between. But the average is actually quite high, about 35,000, 25,000 in around that figure. And we've worked out that if the government were to make this change, we think about 100 million will be raised in additional monies for charities in the first decade alone and a substantially greater amount thereafter. Oh, that is, that's big, yeah. It is, it's massive. And it would be, it would be a good, an added incentive as well for, for more people to, to make a will because a lot of people see it as, as bother, especially, you know, I don't know if you're, if you're sort of south of 50 or thinking, well, do I really need to bother, you know, and this would be, this would be an incentive. I think it is, yeah. I mean, and could be that we have a promotional scheme, the government might even promote such a scheme and to let people know that this, this now exists because a lot of people do, as you say, they do put it off. I think the official figure is three in 10 adults don't have a will. Now, as you get older, that number decreases, the number increases rather that, that have a will, but it's quite a considerable amount of people. And you know, I'm in my fifties now. I'm doing, I'm seeing people passing on, unfortunately, just getting to that age of my life, my parents are still alive and kicking, but they spend every second week throughout a funeral, to be honest. So it's a, it's a fact of life that we're all going to go eventually. And it really is helpful to your relations, your friends, your immediate circle that a will is in place. And it's done properly as well, that, you know, it's thought through. And it's, it's, it's a, it's a really good thing to have in place as a matter of course. Yeah, absolutely. And it's not being morbid. I mean, it's just practical, practical. Yeah, absolutely practical. And that's the way we look at gifts and wills as well. It's an opportunity as it's not about the morbidity of our life or the, the end of our life. It's about what we can do with what we have at the moment to make things better into the future. So it's not about morbidness. It's about opportunities and, you know, far thinking of people making quite an impact and doing what they want to do with some of the money, the harder money that they have. So what you would say to people listening in is to mention it to the local politician and, and maybe politicians I would consider, you know, bringing it to Dublin and who knows what might happen in the next budget? Absolutely. We've, as an organisation, we've emailed and contacted every single TD across the country. I think senators may be as well. So we're hopeful that some pressure will be brought to bear and we, we're part of other, we're, we link in with other charity consortiums as well to, to ask the government to, to work on this as one element of the jigsaw. There's, there's a philanthropy initiative happening at government level and we're hoping this could be one of the key elements of that. Okay. For, if people want more information about my legacy, where would they go? The best starting point is probably my legacy.ie. That's the website address and that lists the 90 plus charities that are, they're on there as well. They'll find out all the information they need to know about about the organisation there and about the member charities and most member charities then will have a legacy page in their own right as well. Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. Niall, thanks for my best look with the, the rest of the campaign. Thanks for having a wee chat with us. Thanks William John. Appreciate it. Get with the best. Virgin Media, Ireland's best broadband with full fibre