ANALYSIS:Coalition's legislative programme to prioritise political party funding issue along with proposed 'jobs budget'
THE DICTUM that politicians “campaign in poetry and govern in prose” comes to mind when considering the legislative programme published yesterday by the Fine Gael-Labour Coalition.
Poetry uses the language of aspiration but prose is the medium of implementation. So now that the ballyhoo of the election campaign has subsided, how are the Coalition parties doing in the prosaic world of bringing about real, concrete change?
One high-profile election promise is scheduled for fairly rapid implementation. That is in the area of donations to political parties, which has long been a source of scandal and has been highlighted once again with the recent publication of the Moriarty report.
Despite its bland, bureaucratic title, the Electoral (Amendment) (Political Funding) Bill has the potential to generate a cultural change in Irish politics.
Current electoral legislation is to be amended in line with commitments on political funding in the Coalition’s programme for government.
As a result, the limit on donations from individuals to political parties in a calendar year will be reduced from the current level of €6,348.69 down to €2,500.
Maximum donations to candidates will be cut from the current €2,539.48 to a new limit of €1,000.
At present, all donations above €5,078.95 to political parties must be disclosed to the Standards in Public Office Commission, which publishes the names of donors and recipients. Under the proposed legislation, this will be reduced to €1,500. The disclosure level for candidates is being reduced from €634.87 to €600.
In addition, the programme for government pledged to “introduce the necessary legal and constitutional provisions to ban corporate donations to political parties”.
A Labour spokesman said last night that the intention was to ban corporate donations and that the issue of trade union contributions to the smaller Coalition party would be considered in that context.
There is clearly going to be a discussion as to whether union funds for the Labour Party constitute donations or, as others would argue, “affiliation fees”. The spokesman pointed out that the Irish Labour Party derives only 4 per cent of its income from this channel, amounting to approximately €106,000 last year.
Reducing limits on donations should be a straightforward procedure; banning corporate and trade union donations may prove a little more tricky, possibly involving issues of free expression for corporate entities under the Constitution.
The programme for government also includes an undertaking to tie public funding for political parties to the proportion of women candidates they put forward at election time.
There is now a commitment to include this in legislation, which will as a result have to set down quotas for the number of women candidates, perhaps between a quarter and one-third of the total.
Fianna Fáil whip Seán Ó Fearghaíl was early out of the traps with a claim that 17 out of the 20 Bills in the programme which are listed for publication in the coming months were prepared by the last government.
Given that the Coalition only took office on March 9th, this is probably inevitable. But the commitment on political funding is a significant one, although the constitutional issues and the minimum level of women candidates still have to be clarified.
Another significant item which is the exclusive brainchild of the new Government is the proposal for a “jobs fund”.
The Finance (No 2) Bill is intended to legislate for taxation measures intended to stimulate job creation, eg, reducing VAT, cutting PRSI for low-income jobs and abolishing the airline travel tax.
Also known as the “jobs budget”, this is promised within the first 100 days of the Government’s taking office, which would be mid-June at the latest. Indeed, Taoiseach Enda Kenny told the Dáil yesterday it would be in place “before the end of May”. So there is no time to lose in processing this particular item.
Another piece of proposed legislation likely to get a speedy passage through the Oireachtas is the Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Bill, which provides for the establishment of two new Government departments.
These are the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, headed by Labour’s Brendan Howlin, and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs under Fine Gael’s Frances Fitzgerald, both of whom are already at work and will be most eager to have their theoretical positions given practical form.
There is nothing in the legislative programme about the Coalition’s plan to abolish the Seanad, although this is still officially on the agenda and only the constitutional complexity of the issue is likely to delay things.
Likewise there is no reference to the children’s rights referendum.
There has been talk of holding that towards the end of the year, perhaps at the same time as the presidential election, but alternative wordings have been suggested for it, so perhaps we should not hold our breath.
In his Dáil speech on the Moriarty report, the Taoiseach pledged to introduce whistleblower legislation, restore freedom of information legislation to its pristine form, amend the Official Secrets Act and scrap the current restrictions on the nature and extent of evidence by civil servants to Oireachtas committees.
There is a Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill listed here as No 67 and a Whistleblower Bill as No 98 out of 105 items and the Opposition will be watching closely for him to get around to the other items, not to mention his commitment to hold a referendum reversing the Abbeylara restrictions on Oireachtas investigations. The public has had the poetry; now it awaits the prose.
Deaglán de Breádún is political correspondent