Fianna Fail will be entitled to spend almost £3 million at the next election, an increase of £944,000 on 1997, under the terms of the Electoral (Amendment) Bill, 2000, the Dail heard yesterday.
Mr Eamon Gilmore, Labour spokesman on the environment and local government, said the Bill - which became available on Wednesday - introduced "vastly increased spending limits" that would provide, an increase of up to 50 per cent in the amount candidates were permitted to spend in an election.
It was no accident that parties which received "the overwhelming bulk" of corporate funding were perceived to be "pro-business", the Dun Laoghaire TD said. It was not surprising that the Taoiseach had resisted all demands, "including those from a number of his own Ministers and backbenchers" to end corporate funding.
Mr Gilmore did not believe that the decision to limit corporate donations to £5,000 (£2,000 from individuals) would reduce the corporate funding received by Fianna Fail, as many commercial concerns have several separate corporate identities, that could have "separate sets of directors", but were controlled by the same individual.
The Bill was introduced just before Christmas, Ms Olivia Mitchell (FG, Dublin South) recalled. It was promoted as being concerned with the introduction of electronic voting. "It is now clear that the primary purpose of the Bill was to legitimise £1 million in extra spending by Fianna Fail," she said. With the growing demands for funds in response to "more sophisticated methods of advertising and communicating with the public", the small contribution of the supporter was replaced with golf classics, benefit nights and £1,000 a table lunches. This has introduced a "grey area of interdependency with the corporate sector", she said.
It left the public "disillusioned and cynical". It was too easy to dismiss the Nice vote as "anti-establishment" or "disinterest in elections". The referendum, she said, was the catalyst which crystallised public thinking. "It is the withdrawal of consent to be governed," she said.
The Bill was amended several times, she said. In the latest version the limits of donations are £5,000 to a party and £2,000 to a candidate. She welcomed this as "an enormous decrease from the £20,000 originally envisaged by the Taoiseach", yet it missed the point. It was inexplicable that "after all the scandals, revelations and all that is still going on at the tribunals" the Government had not grasped that the game was up.
The Minister of State for the Environment, Mr Dan Wallace, said the Bill was innovative and "forward-looking" in terms of electronic voting and counting. "It is also radical in terms of the provision for a reinvigorated donation, expenditure and political funding regime that is both transparent and fair," he said.
Mr Wallace said he was concerned about declining voter turnout. "We must continually examine the statutory and administrative arrangements in place for elections and remove difficulties where they arise," he said.
The Bill would help "to modernise our democracy" and deal "with the more sophisticated demands" imposed on the political decision making process by economy and technological developments.