Sinn Féin raises €468,000 from US-based donors over a year

SINN Fein’s impressive fundraising in the US continues, the party raising more than $600,000 (€454,000) there in the latest 12-month period recorded.

Fundraising arms of foreign political parties are obliged to register with the US Department of Justice and provide income details every six months.

The latest data available is for the six months ending October 31 last, and shows Friends of Sinn Féin raised $195,275 in the period in question. In the preceding six-month period, running to April 30, 2006, the organisation raised $422,757.

It means that, over the course of a year, Sinn Féin pulled in $618,032 (€468,000) from US-based donors.

The figures are higher for the six-month period ending April because it included two of the organisation’s key events — the annual $500-a-plate fundraising dinner in New York in November and the St Patrick’s Day fundraising window in March.

Meanwhile, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams has chosen to concentrate on the restoration of the Northern Assembly this week and will not travel to the US for the traditional St Patrick’s Day engagements.

Instead, Sinn Féin chief negotiator Martin McGuinness will represent the party in Washington, DC at a series of events.

They include meetings with various Irish-American organisations and senior members of Congress, including senators Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy and Representative Richard Neal.

Mr McGuinness will also attend the White House on Friday for the traditional St Patrick’s Day ceremony, which is being a held a day early this year.

He will attend two breakfasts hosted by Friends of Sinn Féin while in the US — one tomorrow morning at the Capital Hilton Hotel in Washington, and the second on Saturday at O’Neill’s Irish bar on Third Avenue, New York.