Fine Gael confirms members used business cards from non-existent polling companies
Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, and Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Eamon Ryan have all admitted their parties engaged in practice wherby members pretended to be pollsters.
Fine Gael has confirmed that some of its members used business cards to identify themselves as being from polling companies that did not exist.
A Fine Gael spokesperson said that the actions were carried out prior to 2016.
“All Fine Gael polling from 2016 onwards have been carried out by commercial research companies and independent contractors.
“Prior to 2016, the majority of polling would have been carried out by commercial research companies and independent contractors.
“Occasionally, members, who were paid or volunteered, carried out polling in constituencies.
The spokesperson admitted "on occasion" these members did not "correctly identify where they were from."
"When asked, some would have replied by reference to a non-existent polling company and had business cards in support of that."
All polling data was gathered in an anonymous format and not retained, the spokesperson added.
"Unlike other parties, Fine Gael does not have a central database of voters.
“Fine Gael will respond fully to any queries from the Data Protection Commissioner.”
Earlier today, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence Simon Coveney has admitted he was aware that members of his Cork South Central constituency posed as independent pollsters.
Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Green Party and Sinn Féin have all admitted their party members would poll the public during elections while hiding the fact they worked for a political party.
Fine Gael's candidate for the Dublin Bay South by-election James Geoghan also admitted he did similar work for former Fine Gael TD Lucinda Creighton, and that he did tell people who he worked for.
“I think it exposes something that most political parties in Ireland were involved in up until five, six, seven years ago,” Mr Coveney said.
“In my constituency certainly there were members would have been doing survey work in the constituency. Taking polling data.
“We didn't set up a fake company or anything but I mean, there would have been people doing survey work in the constituency and not saying they were Fine Gael.”
Mr Coveney says he is sorry about the practice, which was carried out with his knowledge, but says it stopped a “long time ago”.
“I think it's important that people put their hands up and say that, that it shouldn't have happened. It doesn't happen anymore. Polling is now done by professional polling agencies and organisations.”
Mr Coveney said it became clear it wasn't the “professional way to do things” and politics was “looser” then.
When it was put to Mr Coveney that his own colleague Simon Harris said that Sinn Féin’s use of the practice was “sinister”, he said he had been in politics longer than Mr Harris.
“I mean, most of this activity happened, six, seven years ago,” Mr Coveney said, but did not acknowledge that Mr Harris had been in politics for over 10 years.
Fine Gael minister of state Hildegarde Naughton said she did not and was not aware of any polling ever carried out in her constituency.
Mr Coveneny's comments come as the Green Party was forced to admit it also used canvassers as pollsters.
The party released a statement this morning detailing that when they were asked yesterday, no one was aware of the practice taking place.
However, this morning, the party admitted that the practice could have taken place over a decade ago.
The Green Party added they no longer use such practices and do not approve of it.
The Data Protection Commissioner has contacted Sinn Féin about the practice of using party activists to conduct polling to gather information on voters.
It is also expected to write to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
The Taoiseach said his party's use of fake pollsters "should not have happened."
Micheál Martin claims "no personal data was taken" in the canvass and that it was "not good practice at all", however, there is no internal investigation within Fianna Fáil about the issue.
"My understanding from what I've learned from party headquarters that there wouldn't have been fake IDs or anything like that, but that the party members were used with polling companies at the time in terms of a lot of polling that was done prior to 2007.
"It's been dispensed with a long time ago and we only have been doing polling professionally in recent times," he said.
Mr Martin said he doesn't "know if it broke the law."
He said Fianna Fáil's original denial that its members had anonymously polled members of the public was "issued in good faith".
In a statement to the , the party had originally said that it had not engaged in the practice after it was revealed that Sinn Féin members had posed as members of a marketing firm to do the same.
However, that statement was later changed to reflect that the practice was used before 2007. Micheál Martin said today that he never commissioned any private polls and would not be resigning over the matter, as demanded by one of his own TDs, Deputy Marc MacSharry.
"I have never commissioned a poll myself. The party's statement was made in good faith but in error. I think as soon as people realised that there had been private polls prior to 2007, they contacted the media.
"The activity was discontinued in 2007. I think it was wrong and was not the correct approach."
Mr Martin said that he was not surprised that Mr MacSharry had called for his resignation, but would not be doing so.
Fine Gael has also admitted using activists to pretend to be pollsters in order to gather information on voters.
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar admitted his party paid students to misrepresent themselves as pollsters in order to carry out covert surveys of voters.
Labour leader Alan Kelly told the that to his knowledge his party has never engaged in this practice.
Following revelations about Sinn Féin training activists to set-up fake polling companies, Mr Varadkar admitted his party employed similar tactics to gather information on voters.
Speaking on RTÉ’s , Mr Varadkar said his party “quite frankly” did pose as non-existent polling companies to survey voters.
“Volunteers would have been asked to do surveys door-to-door or students would have been paid to do it and it would have been done on a similar basis – anonymised for the purposes of polling,” the Tánaiste said.
Mr Varadkar said the “practice has been discontinued” and has not been used by Fine Gael members since 2016.
Earlier, Mr Varadkar said Fine Gael has only used private polling companies since he became party leader.
Sinn Féin’s Eoin Ó Broin defended Sinn Féin’s use of a non-existant opinion poll company called the Irish Market Research Agency (IMRA) to gather information on the views of voters.
Speaking on RTÉ’s , the Dublin Mid-West TD said he used the tactic when he ran for the Dáil in 2016 but said he has not used such pollsters since that election.
Mr Ó Broin confirmed party members were asked to portray themselves as pollsters using IDs to collect information for him in Dublin Mid-West.
He said party members who engaged in the covert polling used ID badges with their photos and real names but featuring the logo of the fictitious polling company.
Sligo Fianna Fáil TD Marc MacSharry said the "gardaí should be consulted" over reports that Sinn Féin told members to pretend to be a fake research company to carry out polling.
Mr MacSharry said this was not "normal political behaviour, and I think that the gardaí should be consulted, quite frankly".
"In politics, we're used to tackling people on one another's policies, and certainly that's not difficult when it comes to Sinn Féin's toytown economic policies, among others.
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