Free rein for FF to boost election war chest

FIANNA FÁIL can spend unlimited sums of money on next year’s local elections, viewed as critical to Bertie Ahern’s leadership, because Martin Cullen is refusing to cap campaign expenditure.

Rejecting the necessity for a spending cap, Environment Minister Martin Cullen says the key factor in winning elections is “shoe leather and knocking on doors”, rather than money.

Yet he personally raised nearly €35,000 for his own election campaign kitty last year - by far the most political donations and almost twice as much as the next largest recipient.

The minister’s spokesman confirmed yesterday that in the absence of statutory limits for candidates, there are also no boundaries for political parties, unlike in a general election where expenditure at all levels is tightly restricted.

This allows the political parties to spend at will on their national campaigns and also target marginal constituencies for additional resources from headquarters.

Mr Cullen is the head of Fianna Fáil local elections campaign as well as being responsible for overseeing the entire election process, but denies any conflict of interest.

According to the minister, the introduction of limits would create unjustifiable and unnecessary bureaucratic procedures and local authority election candidates do not spend significant amounts of money.

Spending does matter in the local elections, according to research on the 1999 campaign by the Department of Political Science at Trinity College Dublin, which found that even with relatively small amounts, expenditure was significantly related to electoral success.

Despite the constant stream of revelations from the tribunals over political donations and calls from opposition parties to bring in the limits, the minister says there are now rules in place for local authority members and candidates do have to make returns on their expenditure and contributions received.

“The nature of these campaigns is that the spend is quite low and there are rules in place to govern the election,” the minister’s spokesman said.

Arguing the lack of limits suits Fianna Fáil as it is consistently the biggest election spender, Fine Gael environment spokesman Bernard Allen says the Government has failed to learn the lessons of the past.

Labour Party environment spokesman Eamon Gilmore has published a bill in recent days to introduce spending limits, as he claims without them it leaves the way open for wealthy candidates to try to buy their way into office.

The High Court will rule today on whether Health Minister Micheál Martin spent beyond his permitted statutory limit in last year’s general election in Cork South-Central.

If Justice Peter Kelly decides there was an overspend, as claimed by the disability campaigner Kathy Sinnot, who lost out on a seat by six votes, then the judge will go on to determine whether this had a material effect on the result.

Already Fianna Fáil has started spending on their local and European elections strategy by again hiring the leading US political gurus, who advised Bill Clinton during his two successful presidential elections, to help halt the slide since the general election.