A step in the right direction on donations transparency

HERE’S a question: how could the main political parties spend millions on the February general election and yet not declare a single political donation in the year leading up to it?

Where did the money come from?

Only the parties themselves know — and they’re not saying. Precisely how the main parties in Ireland have been funded — and who is funding them — has, for the most part, remained a closely guarded secret.

The existing laws surrounding the area state that a party has to declare only those donations which exceed €5,078.95. They can take as much donations as they like below that threshold and not have to declare them.

And since the legislation came into effect in 1997, the main parties have got down to a fine art the practice of raising significant sums of money without having to declare it.

Take February’s election and the run-up to it as an example.

Fine Gael headquarters spent €1,193,363 in the election on “national spending” — ie, things like polling, advertising, transport and campaign workers (national spending excludes spending by individual politicians and candidates, who have to declare separately donations they personally receive). Labour spent €789,332 and Fianna Fáil €682,448.

All three parties get state funding, but they cannot use this money for election campaigns. So the parties had to meet the outlays above from their own resources.

Yet in 2010, the year when the three parties could see an election looming and began planning for same, none of them declared a single donation to the state watchdog, the Standards in Public Office Commission.

Why was this? It could have been because the parties simply received no donations at all. It could have been because the parties funded their respective outlays entirely through loans. But it’s much more likely that they did receive donations — and that these donations fell beneath the €5,078.95 threshold, meaning none of them had to be declared.

In all, just €67,907 in donations was declared for 2010 — the lowest figure since the law commenced in 1997.

The money was declared by the Green Party (€38,088), Sinn Féin (€24,000) and the Socialist Party (€5,819).

In the case of each of those three parties, the money came from their elected representatives, who each donated a portion of their wages.

Aside from the Greens, Sinn Féin and the Socialists, no other party declared a donation. Not Fine Gael, not Labour, not Fianna Fáil.

Last year wasn’t unique in this regard.

When Enda Kenny took over as leader of Fine Gael in 2002, he reversed a ban on corporate donations put in place by his predecessor, Michael Noonan.

Since then, Fine Gael as a party has not declared one single political donation to the Standards Commission. Yet it has spent millions on elections in that time.

Fine Gael is not unique in this. There have also been several years in which Labour and Fianna Fáil have not declared any donations.

This makes a mockery of the idea of transparency. In fairness to the Standards Commission, it has been pointing to this problem for years, highlighting the lack of accountability in several reports.

Last year, for example, it stated that the provisions aimed at ensuring openness in relation to disclosure of donations remained “ineffective”.

“It should be possible for each citizen to have a clear picture of election spending by each candidate and party and also a clear indication of the sources for such funding. If the intention of the legislation is to provide for transparency and openness in relation to party funding and expenditure, then it is not achieving this aim.

“The Standards Commission has repeatedly stated that there is a strong case to be made for a new approach to the general funding of political parties, for increased transparency in such funding and for greater scrutiny of political party expenditure.”

The calls by the Standards Commission for changes to the law were largely ignored by the previous government.

For that reason, it is welcome that the new administration is finally doing something about it.

Environment Minister Phil Hogan published a bill this week which, when passed into law next year, should improve transparency levels.

The legislation falls short of the commitment in the Programme for Government, which was to ban corporate donations outright.

But it does provide that corporate donors will in future have to register with the Standards Commission if they make a donation of more than €200.

That register will, in turn, be available for public viewing — so citizens will be able to see for themselves which companies, trade unions, societies and building societies are giving political parties large sums of cash.

There is no question but that this is a welcome development.

The declaration threshold for non-corporate donors — ie, private citizens — will fall from €5,078.95 to €1,500.

And no donor — either corporate or non-corporate — will be able to give a party more than €2,500, a significant reduction from the previous maximum of €6,348.69.

It could be argued that the system Hogan is proposing still does not go far enough. For example, given that the declaration threshold for non-corporate donors will be set at €1,500, parties could, in theory, solicit as many €1,499 donations as they like and not have to declare them.

It would arguably have been better if the declaration threshold for corporate and non-corporate donors alike was set at the same level of €200.

That would have given a much clearer picture of who is donating what.

But for all that, the legislation will surely be a step in the right direction. And given that we in the media are never shy in criticising governments of any hue, we should acknowledge too when progressive steps are being taken.