Proposed changes to regulations governing political funding do not go far enough.
THERE was justifiable concern when it was suggested that former property developers, people whose debts had become the financial responsibility of our citizenry via NAMA, appeared to be protecting their assets, which might otherwise have been used to fund hospitals and schools, by transferring them into the names of their spouses. This week it emerged that many of these same developers had been squirrelling other assets away with other “honeys”, i.e., their mistresses in the major political parties.
The Irish Independent investigative team reported that hundreds of thousands of euro had been donated by businesses, including developers who now were in NAMA. Most went to Fianna Fail, lesser amounts to Fine Gael and Labour. I suggested in the Seanad that the parties should, in the spirit of good citizenship, reimburse our hard-pressed Republic for the full amount of these donations. When the laughter died down, I was informed that that money “was well spent”.
Are corporate and large private donations justifiable? Legislation currently before the Oireachtas would limit the size of such donations and lower the threshold for disclosure of all donations. It will become harder to donate anonymously. While this is to be welcomed, I don’t believe it goes far enough. As Lincoln stated, government should be of the people, by the people and for the people. Corporate entities should have no role in the funding of democracy. Similarly, there should be stricter limits on the size of private donations than is proposed, and all donations should be disclosed. This reform would undoubtedly reduce the amount of money available to the parties, but the opaque nature of the current regulations makes it hard to assess by how much. Some insight was provided, again via the excellent Irish Independent investigative team, on Friday. The great bulk of funding of the parties, approximately €13m annually, comes from the State, and is divvied up according to the number of first preference votes the party received in the previous general election, and the number of seats the party holds. Private and corporation donations make up the rest. In the case of Sinn Fein, millions have come from the States.
The public money cannot be spent directly on election expenses, but as the sole business of the parties is winning elections, and most of the money spent on these “non-electoral” purposes is actually used directly or indirectly for reputation-enhancing activities, it is hard to see how this prohibition can be enforced in the spirit if not in the letter of the regulation. Most of it is spent on the salaries of full-time staff. Some is used to provide party leaders with salaries to augment their parliamentary stipends. Is this public money well spent? Does it enhance the public good? Though we have ample grounds for concern about the practice of democracy in our Republic, we should still esteem, cherish and support our system of representative government.
No one argues with that, but the question is whether the current system of party funding supports or undermines our democracy.
While there are arguments both ways, there must be serious concerns about a system which transfers such public wealth to private entities which then use it at their leaders’ discretion. One would also hope that there would be an arm’s length relationship between the paymasters in this arrangement (the government) and the recipients (government and opposition parties). Thus, I am troubled by the attempt of the current Government to enforce gender-based quotas on the parties, on pain of funding reduction. While the aim of enhancing our system of parliamentary democracy by increasing the participation of women is entirely correct, the essentially coercive attempt by a political majority to enforce policy on all of the parties in the State under pain of disinheritance is a dangerous precedent.
Similarly troubling is the disclosure that a foreign charity, which has over the years dispensed hundreds of millions of euro from a single generous philanthropist in support of countless good causes, has donated heavily to one side of the proposed Children’s Referendum. Sincerely held opinions will likely be expressed by both sides of this referendum, and the result should only be determined by the votes of informed and sincerely motivated citizens. We should move towards a model of modestly sized political donations made only by individuals who live in Ireland. Living within straitened means might also be educational for the parties.
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