Financing politics is a difficult issue but one we, as a democratic society, need to address, writes Elaine Byrne.
WHEN I came down for Mass on Sunday morning my mother had the Sunday newspapers already bought. She was poring over the photos with the magnifying glass she uses for embroidery with the little light at the end. To the mortification of my teenage siblings, she found me among the thousands of nude figures who bared all for Spencer Tunick's recent "art installation" at Dublin docklands. My mother didn't quite mind my nudity, she was there when I entered the world au naturel, and had seen it all before.
Like a Mexican wave, we took our clothes off and stuffed them into plastic bags at an ungodly hour last Saturday morning. The coldness was compensated for by the kindness of strangers who obliged by sharing their body heat. It might seem like a strange thing to say, but standing ankle-deep at Ringsend in the lashing rain and singing Ole Ole at 7am with a throng of naked volunteers was a very liberating experience.
And what, pray tell, has this got to do with the funding of politics? Well, the Spencer Tunick experience demonstrated that unembellished transparency feels good even though the thought of it might seem a tad uncomfortable.
The Standards in Public Office Commission (Sipo) published their report on donations received in 2007 by political parties last week. They found that from the €10.1 million spent by parties and candidates in the three-week period before the general election last year (never mind that spent in the previous two years!) just €1.3 million was disclosed. That's €8.8 million in donations not disclosed.
Excluding subscriptions from the salaries of elected representatives to their parties, the donations disclosed by political parties in 2007 amounted to just €43,693. Sipo suggested starkly that "the legislation is not achieving [the] purpose" of transparency in political funding and recommended that political parties should annually furnish accounts to an independent authority.
In 2009, the Council of Europe body, the Group of States against Corruption (Greco), will conduct a "transparency of party funding" report in Ireland. That report, which will be publicly available, has 29 very specific questions with an impressive complement of supplementary questions. A thorough and potentially embarrassing evaluation by an international body is coming down the tracks.
The potential influence of political donations received much attention with the entry of the anti-Lisbon group, Libertas, to the political fray. Under the legislation, Libertas is defined as a "third party" and not a political party.
In other words, while parties must provide a donation statement to Sipo specifying their list of donors, Libertas does not.
In effect, this means that Libertas, which out-financed all the political parties combined, entirely self-regulated their self-estimated €1.3 million in donations.
This is a distraction, albeit an extraordinarily serious one. There is a naked truth which is waiting to be laid bare.
The Electoral Acts prohibit the use of public exchequer money for election purposes. Elections can only be financed through donations. Political parties have just emerged from an expensive general election and referendum campaign. In the next four years they face into five potentially expensive national campaigns: the children's referendum, the 2009 local and European elections, the 2011 presidential election, the 2012 general election and, God forbid, another Lisbon referendum.
Democracy is not free.
Because of the tribunals' revelations, those who donate to political parties are stigmatised by unfair assumptions of attempts to gain improper influence. The perception that political donations have been used for personal use may also promote reluctance to donate. Are the parties broke?
In interviews with the general secretaries of the political parties the consensus is one of just about financially surviving or, as one euphemistically referred to it, "the business cycle".
Varying degrees of access to the accounts of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens (Sinn Féin and the PDs did not respond to numerous queries), reveal a pattern of financial vulnerability.
Fine Gael is currently €2.25 million in arrears (Irish Times, December 31st, 2007).
Fianna Fáil operates from rented offices, having sold 13 Upper Mount Street in 2001 to clear its debts. Fianna Fáil is currently engaged in a "strategic review" of its fundraising.
In the future, will financial considerations determine the setting of a date for a referendum in order to avoid the implications of the McKenna judgment, or decisions not to contest a presidential election, or pushing the boat out for a snap election?
Is this really how we want to conduct our democracy? Should State funding be extended for election purposes and eliminate the need for donations altogether? In the midst of a recession and a crisis of trust in politics, the public may not have the stomach for such an initiative. We may have to wait until the Mahon tribunal report recommendations next year to face up to the underlying financial challenges facing political parties.
Being fully transparent, or naked as the case may be, is liberating. Trust me.