Reform of donations system needs more than lip service
We know much of the money is spent by political organisations in Ireland on top of the €13 million provided to them by the Exchequer each year.
We also know €8m was spent in the brief campaign period ahead of the 2007 General Election.
But we are not told what was the expenditure in the build up to the campaign and what is the outlay by political parties in other years.
Only a fraction of political benefactors are publicised.
Lip service has been paid to transparency and reform but the figures contained in the accounts – from a sample of companies – give an indication of another world of fundraising away from public scrutiny.
The €113,731 pot revealed today is not part of any database and ordinarily is not readily accessible to the public.
The businesses lodged the details with the Companies Registration Office, fulfilling their obligations under the Electoral Act to mark political donations in excess of €5,078 on their annual returns.
The list is of businesses who made this statement during 2008. These were made available under the Freedom of Information Act, and an application for previous years was denied.
A subsequent trawl of records revealed money given to political parties and elected officials ranging from €150 to €15,658 and totalling more than €113,000.
It covered a period from November 2005 to October 2008, the vast bulk fell 12 months either side of the May 2007 election.
In most cases the companies went above and beyond their requirements and reported smaller donations and the beneficiaries.
In doing so, they helped uncover a practice of political parties accepting sums just below the disclosure threshold to avoid having to declare the identity of their donors.
This €113,731 is not an exhaustive list of all political donations but a sample of revenue streams the carefully worded legislation has allowed parties to keep from public view.
The political establishment has ignored persistent calls for reform by ethics groups, statutory bodies, non-governmental organisations, international agencies and political activists.
Political parties have instead protested their integrity.
However, when the current tribunal trail draws to an end taxpayers will have spent more than €1 billion investigating the motivations of politicians, their perks and their personal associations.
And, while the Oireachtas has heard calls to curb the cost of the tribunal system, the voices demanding a completely transparent policy for donations are meek by comparison.
As part of the 2007 Programme for Government Fianna Fáil, the Progressive Democrats and the Green Party promised to established a new Electoral Commission.
This was to assume the role of SIPO and be responsible for probing spending habits and accounts.
But on the bases of the annual returns sourced by the Irish Examiner, the Government coalition of Fianna Fáil, the Green Party and the now defunct Progressive Democrats differ greatly in terms of practice.
On either side of the general election cycle, Fianna Fáil was given €70,887 by companies who noted the payments in their annual returns.
During the four-week election campaign the party spent €3.6m, of which 18.1% could be accounted for in disclosures to SIPO by either headquarters or individual candidates.
The Progressive Democrats accepted more than €15,000 from seven companies and none of it was declared.
This was in keeping with its preferred modus operandi from the 2007 election when its campaign expenditure was €1,012,707 of which 1.6% could be accounted for in its disclosures.
For the Green Party, it has a ban on accepting corporate donations and despite its elected officials handing over part of their income to headquarters, its disclosures could only account for 14.1% of its election spend.
But the Green Party continues to shout about reform. At its recent party conference in Wexford its leader John Gormley said he would make drastic changes.
“I intend, as Minister for the Environment, to introduce legislation to stop political donations from the big corporations, to restrict the spending of money by political parties between elections and to reduce the limits at which donations have to be declared,” he said.
However, since then – beyond spending caps for the local elections – there was no effort to reform the system in time for the by-elections taking place the same day or a general election which may happen at any time.
He had ordered a report from University College Dublin on the establishment of an Electoral Commission and this was handed to him in February.
The comprehensive report was given a low-key launch on the day he announced the spending caps.
In terms of openness and transparency the report observed that the turkeys in the Dáil and Seanad were not going to vote for Christmas by bringing in laws to cap their incomes.
“It seems unlikely that the Oireachtas will choose to undertake a radical deregulation of the field of party and election funding, whether by reducing disclosure requirements, removing expenditure limits or significantly simplifying the applicable definitions and rules,” it said.
THE report said SIPO, or whatever agency takes over from it, should have stronger powers to regulate and punish political parities, even withholding state funding if necessary.
On Friday Mr Gormley’s Department of the Environment said it was still considering the lengthy report. And the criticism of the donations system has not been restricted to within Irish borders.
For the 2007 election the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe carried out a study of our practices and procedures.
In its comments on spending limits, reporting and accounts it said get-out clauses written into the 1997 Electoral Act rendered the rules almost obsolete.
The OSCE recommended an expanded and more thorough system for analysing how campaigns are financed and where the money is spent.
“Consideration could be given to amending the 1997 Electoral Act, to extend the reporting period, and once the election is called, to undertake a backward review of accounts,” it said.
The report also questioned the perceived double standards in reporting which favour registered political parties over non-governmental groups.
At a recent Oireachtas committee on European Affairs the secretary to the Standards in Public Office Commission, David Waddell, said political parties criticise the lack of probity for groups like Libertas because, until recently, it was not a registered party.
However, he said in other areas the main parties benefited from the cover of legislation.
“[SIPO] suggested citizens were entitled to know how political parties funded their general election campaigns and how they spent their money.
“[It] noted that there was a mismatch between the expenditure disclosed to the commission and the donations disclosed during the previous year.
“It has advised that political parties and third parties should be required to publish audited accounts and furnish such accounts to it as an independent body in order that both sides of the balance sheet can be seen,” it said.
However, the calls for reform were only followed by more calls for reform, the parties kept their cosy clause of donor anonymity.
