Organisations getting more bang for their buck in Lisbon campaign

MONEY is usually the weapon of choice when winning people over to your point of view in matters of public concern. And while the slogans and media space that money buys may not dictate the result, it certainly helps.

It is generally accepted that the rules on donations, spending and air time the state-owned radio and TV can give are flawed. There have been promises to make changes to the most obvious issues – such a making everyone and not just registered political parties account for what they spend. But is this enough?

Contributions from bodies outside the state are banned but donations to websites for instance are difficult to trace. And what about contributions from the European Parliament?

Information is covered by rules regulating what the state-owned national broadcaster can air and how the Referendum Commission conveys its message.

The problems came to the fore during last year’s referendum when people wondered where Declan Ganley’s vast reserves came from.

This referenda is throwing up more evidence about some of the problems.

Probably about €4 million was spent on the vote last year and this year the spend will be a little less at something in the region of €3.3m.

The big difference this time is that the business community and organisations specially founded to promote the Yes side are making a major contribution and estimate they will spend €1.5m.

Those civil society groups on the No side are mostly small organisations that manage to achieve a big bang with few bucks, although Cóir says it plans to spend up to €250,000 and the resurrected Libertas says its contribution will be somewhere between €50,000 and €200,000.

The spending by the political parties will be down as they struggle to replenish war chests in case of a snap general election. But their spending will be close to €1m with €570,000 coming from their political groups in the European Parliament.

Some €225,000 of this, is supporting the No campaign, with €70,000 from the Communist GUE group supporting Socialist MEP Joe Higgins and Sinn Féin, even though the party no longer has an MEP from the Republic.

The rest, €150,000, comes from the Freedom and Democracy group that has no Irish members in the European Parliament and its campaign in Ireland was launched by the leader of the euro-sceptic British UKIP party.

Contributions in kind can be just as important to a campaign but there is no way of measuring the contribution made by for instance Rupert Murdoch. The bias of his Sunday Times was revealed by a disgruntled journalist after the last referendum but this time round his Wall Street Journal has become involved. Declan Ganley strangely broke the news of his comeback in the US paper, though his engagement appears to be limited so far.

Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso’s announcement that the EU institution has approved the government’s request for €15m to help redundant Dell and Banta Turnkey employees back to work could be construed as interference. But should all announcements of good and bad news be shelved until votes are over? Surely not.

Perhaps the best way of resolving the more obvious attempts to buy votes is to adopt firstly the Belgian approach of putting up a limited number of hoardings in public places and limiting posters to these. And then spend the money saved to educating the public about the government and the EU’s actions in between referenda to allow the electorate make up their own minds at referenda time.