December 2003 - Review of Electoral Acts

Receipt of a donation for political purposes

A connected issue is that of establishing whether or not a group received a donation for political purposes. Many organisations, which operate on a permanent basis, have broad agendas or remits which are relevant to a particular sector of the population or have an international dimension. They would argue that activities in which they are involved are financed from their general funding, whatever form that might take, and that monies received are not specifically related to a particular issue. In many cases they would also argue that their activities are not political.

Given that the legislative determinant of whether a group is a third party is receipt by the group of a donation given for political purposes and that political purposes has a very wide meaning, it is difficult to see, short of questioning the intentions of every donor, how it is possible to distinguish between donations given for political purposes and monies given to fund the general activities of the group. A typical example would be a standing organisation which is primarily engaged in promoting the interests of a certain group in society and which seeks contributions from the public on an ongoing basis. The organisation might decide to engage in a one off campaign of opposition to a proposal of Government or a public authority which it considered to be damaging to the well-being of its constituency. If the organisation received financial, or other, support, valued at more than €126.97, either before, during or after mounting such a campaign is it the case that such support is to be regarded as a political donation and, therefore, that the organisation is a third party. In case of doubt, is it incumbent on the organisation, or, perhaps, the Standards Commission, to enquire of a benefactor as to the purpose in giving the support.

This is a real difficulty in supervising the legislation. It would be useful if it could be addressed in conducting the review. It is suggested that, instead of concentrating on receipt of a donation, an alternative approach might be to focus, as in the case of elections, on spending by individuals or groups and to regard them as third parties if they intend to incur expenditure over a certain threshold, say €5,000, in relation to a campaign which is for political purposes as defined in the legislation.

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