Probe into McAleese-backed contest

YOUR Country Your Call, the competition backed by President Mary McAleese to find two ideas to help spark economic recovery, is being investigated for compliance with political funding and ethics legalisation.

The move follows at least two complaints to the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO) that the competition launched earlier this year was political in nature and therefore breaches rules governing the registering of donors for third-party political organisations.

The winners of the competition are to be announced on September 17.

The competition’s spokesman Padraig McKeon — the managing director of Drury Communications and a member of the Your Country Your Call steering committee — confirmed SIPO officials had been in contact with the private company, Smaoineamh Mór Limited, which administers the competition.

The complaints raises concerns about the lack of transparency around the funding of the organisation and the fact that Smaoineamh Mór Limited has not registered as a third party with SIPO.

One complaint states: “The donors made their payments in the knowledge that An Smaoineamh Mór Limited intended to use the money to promote or lobby for a change in the fiscal or legal or regulatory circumstances of Ireland via a competition and lobbying campaign under the style and title of Your Country, Your Call.”

However, Mr McKeon said the position of the competition was to facilitate ideas that would help the country economically and that Smaoineamh Mór Limited is a registered charity.

Among the ideas selected as “semi-finalists” is that Ireland be positioned “as an online gaming jurisdiction as established in Malta, Isle of Man, Alderney, Gibraltar etc for online sports betting, poker, casino, bingo etc.”

The two winners will receive €100,000 each and also development fund of up to €500,000 to implement each of their proposals.

However Mr McKeon said the competition was not political in nature and should not be defined as such under ethics legalisation.

Smaoineamh Mór Limited is registered at the Arthur Cox Building, Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2 and is believed to have received donations with a declared value of about €2 million.

Then Minister for Enterprise Mary Coughlan said the Government intended donating €300,000.

A SIPO spokesman said he could not comment on current investigations.