Politicians face attack at the next general election from pressure groups who are not legally constrained on what they spend in campaigns, the chairman of the Public Offices Commission warned yesterday.
Mr Kevin Murphy said the issue was of major concern to political parties worried that individual candidates might be targeted by groups such as those protesting against incinerators, abortion or immigration.
"This is a big and genuine worry for a lot of politicians, that the attack would be concentrated on the last few days of the campaign. There is very little the commission could do," he said.
The commission could perhaps forward the relevant file to the Director of Public Prosecutions if approached by the candidate, he added.
Any pressure group wishing to spend money during a campaign must register at the beginning and give an estimate of what it was going to spend.
However there was no cap on what they might spend and there was no censure if they went over that limit.
Legislation is going through the Dail this week which would mean these groups would have to state the source of their funding.
Political candidates standing for election must observe strict rules set down by the commission relating to how much they spend. Mr Murphy agreed that a candidate was in a very difficult position in the face of such an attack, particularly at the end of a campaign when budgets had almost been spent. He said a lot of damage could be done.
The government in Canada had attempted to regulate this area. However. the Canadian Supreme Court "felt freedom of expression overrode attempts to control freedom of spending".
If such a group contravened the regulations, he explained, they faced prosecution and a fine of £1,000.
During the Nice Treaty referendum campaign the Government expressed strong concern about some of the groups advocating a No vote and the source of their finances.
Speaking at the publication of the commission's fifth annual report, Mr Murphy was asked his opinion of how things had changed in Ireland in recent years in relation to ethics, and issues of probity in public office. "An awful lot of the things are out now in terms of tribunals which were all mostly there before the commission was set up. The Ethics in Public Office Act has brought a degree of restraint into play."
He said he did not wish to claim all the responsibility for the commission, to be replaced by the Standards in Public Office Commission in October. It did not see itself as "an anti-corruption commission" but rather as a transparent one "bringing things out into the open".
Speaking about the culture surrounding the existing ethics legislation, Mr Murphy said some people thought it was a case of analysing the legislation and thinking that "if there is a way around it then it is all right". Matters, he said, needed to be "spelt out in great detail in terms of a code of conduct".
The full text of the Public Offices Commission's report is available on The Irish Times website at www.ireland.com/special