09/06/09 - Donation Statements furnished by Political Parties for 2008

Part 6 - Accounting Units

Section 23B(2) of the Act requires the appropriate officer of each political party to notify the Standards Commission of the name and address of each of its "accounting units" and the "responsible person" of each accounting unit. The "responsible person" is the treasurer or any other person responsible for dealing with donations to the unit.

An accounting unit, on receipt of a monetary donation in excess of €126.97, must also open and maintain a political donations account in a financial institution in the State. The responsible person must, by 31 March each year, furnish a statement from the financial institution in which the account is held together with the Certificate of Monetary Donations, to the Standards Commission, stating that all monetary donations received during the preceding year were lodged to the account and that all amounts debited from the account were used for political purposes. The Certificate of Monetary Donations is accompanied by a Statutory Declaration. It is an offence for the responsible person of an accounting unit to fail to comply with this requirement.

The Standards Commission wrote to the appropriate officers of each political party on 6 January 2009 requesting details of the party's accounting units. The letter provided details of each accounting unit of the party which had made a return to the Standards Commission in respect of 2007. The appropriate officer was asked to inform the Standards Commission of any change of an accounting unit and/or their responsible person (including change of contact details) and to provide details of any accounting units and their responsible persons which were not on the list.

On 12 March 2009 the Standards Commission wrote to the responsible person of each accounting unit notified to it. A Certificate of Monetary Donations/Statutory Declaration form was enclosed with the letter. In recognition of the fact that the political donations accounts of some accounting units may not have been active during 2008 a separate form (Form 2) was also enclosed. Where an accounting unit's political donations account was not active during 2008, the responsible person of the accounting unit was required to complete Form 2 only and was not required to complete the Statutory Declaration or to forward a copy of a bank statement in respect of 2008.

Table 3 gives details of the number of accounting units of each party contacted by the Standards Commission in 2009. Six political parties have accounting units and the position with regard to returns received from these accounting units is as set out in the table. A number of accounting units informed the Standards Commission that they had never received a monetary donation exceeding €126.97. The Standards Commission notified party headquarters accordingly. The Standards Commission is still pursuing accounting units which have not provided a return or otherwise replied to it.

Table 3 - Accounting Units contacted in 2009

The Standards Commission continues to experience difficulties in supervising these provisions of the Act. It has highlighted these difficulties in annual and other reports and has suggested that the responsible person of a branch of a political party should be required to notify the Standards Commission if a donation in excess of €126.97 is received. An offence might be introduced in the Act for failing to comply with this requirement. This would remove responsibility from appropriate officers to notify the Standards Commission of all branches of the party which have received donations in excess of €126.97.

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