Public in dark over funding for election

THE public does not know how parties and politicians fund their general election campaigns because of the lack of transparency surrounding donations, a State watchdog has said.

More than €10 million of this year’s election income will effectively be unaccounted for, the Standards in Public Office Commission has indicated.

The commission said yesterday there was a “huge gap” between the amount parties and candidates spent on elections and the donations they declared.

This raised a question mark over how campaigns were funded, commission secretary David Waddell told a cross-party Oireachtas committee.

The commission last week issued a report showing that parties and candidates spent just over €11m on this year’s general election.

Donation statements from parties and successful candidates do not have to be submitted to the commission until early next year.

But the commission believes the donation statements will total less than €300,000 — meaning a gap of more than €10.7m.

“It is not apparent to the Standards Commission, or to the general public, therefore, how the parties and candidates finance their election campaigns,” said Mr Waddell.

The chairman of the committee, Fianna Fáil TD Sean Fleming, took issue with that sentence, questioning if it contained an innuendo.

Mr Fleming said it should be obvious that the parties and candidates funded their campaigns from perfectly legitimate donations which were beneath the disclosure threshold.

But Mr Waddell said the commission was not making innuendo or accusations of wrongdoing.

However, he stressed that the existing disclosure requirements “don’t give the full picture” of income and expenditure.