Gormley turns tail and refuses to link SF with Northern Bank raid
But Green leader John Gormley then shied away from saying anything about Sinn Féin when asked about the prop.
The Greens had called the press conference to outline its opposition to corporate donations in politics.
The Greens do not accept such donations, and to highlight its stance on the issue, they used bundles of fake money to illustrate the resources available to each party during the election.
The Greens suggested Fine Gael had a war chest of €2.25 million, Fianna Fáil €1m, Labour €1m, and Sinn Féin €250,000 compared to just €40,000 for themselves.
The Sinn Féin money was denominated in fake Northern Bank sterling — a reference to the 2004 bank raid in Belfast which was attributed to the IRA.
But while the Greens were happy for cameras to capture the image, Mr Gormley was reluctant to make any comment on the topic.
“I want to avoid an election where people start throwing around those allegations like snuff at a wake. What we’re trying to do here is point out something that is a reality in Irish politics — that funding is taking place from sources,” he said.
“I’m not saying it’s corrupt, but what I am saying — what I am saying very clearly — is that very often he who pays the piper calls the tune. And for far too long, we’ve seen in this country the influence of builders, the influence of banks.”
Pushed again about what exactly the Greens were saying in relation to Sinn Féin, Mr Gormley said: “I’m not going to get into what Sinn Féin are about. If Sinn Féin want to make explanations, they can.”
Separately, the Green leader admitted his party had to share the blame for failing to implement recommendations which would have helped clean up the political system.
During the Greens’ time in power, successive reports by the Standards in Public Office Commission calling for reforms were mostly ignored.
The Standards Commission — the state’s ethics watchdog — wanted to tighten the rules governing political donations and also sought greater powers to launch inquiries into suspected political abuses.
But very few of the commission’s recommendations were ever implemented.
Elsewhere Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams has accused a “deeply corrupt political elite” of causing the economic crisis.
Mr Adams claimed the main opposition parties, such as Fine Gael and Labour, were as much to blame as the Government for what had happened to the country — saying they had gone along with the “cosy consensus”.
But he refused to name individuals whom he believed to be corrupt — saying only that the people he blamed fell into two distinct categories of corruption.
“There are people who are criminally corrupt — and that is a matter for due process,” he said.
“There are people then who are corrupt because they’ve gone along with cosy consensus, with auction politics, with all that has underpinned decisions in this state. So I make the charge to them that having been complicit in this, they have helped create the situation we’re in.”
Mr Adams was speaking at the official launch of Sinn Féin’s election campaign in the National Gallery in Dublin.
