26/06/07 - Donation Statements furnished by political parties for 2006

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. An accounting unit means a branch or other subsidiary organisation of the party, which, in any particular year, receives a donation the value of which exceeds €126.97. The "responsible person" is the treasurer or any other person responsible for dealing with donations to the unit.

The Standards Commission writes to the appropriate officers of each political party annually requesting details of the party's accounting units. Table 6 gives details of the number of accounting units which were notified to the Standards Commission for 2006.

An accounting unit, on receipt of a monetary donation in excess of €126.97, must open and maintain a political donations account in a financial institution in the State and must lodge the donation and any further monetary donations received, of whatever value, to the account. The responsible person of the accounting unit must, by 31 March each year, furnish to the Standards Commission a statement from the financial institution in which the account is held together with a Certificate of Monetary Donations 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.

On 9 February 2007 the Standards Commission wrote to the responsible person of each of the 166 accounting units, notified to it, enclosing a Certificate of Monetary Donations/Statutory Declaration form. A separate form - Form 2 - was also enclosed. An accounting unit whose political donations account was not active during 2006 was required only to complete Form 2 and was not required to complete the Statutory Declaration or to forward a copy of a bank statement for 2006.

To date, 126 of these accounting units have furnished a return to the Standards Commission. The Standards Commission is pursuing those accounting units which have not replied.

The Standards Commission has continued to experience difficulties in supervising this part of the legislation. It is aware that some of these difficulties can contribute to the failure by accounting units to furnish the required documentation by the statutory deadline. Some of the difficulties encountered by the Standards Commission were set out in a report to the Ceann Comhairle in December 2003 on compliance by accounting units with the requirements of the legislation during 2002. The Standards Commission will also be referring to this matter in its annual report for 2006.

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