Donations Disclosed by Political Parties for 2007

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.

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 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 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 19 February 2008 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 2006. 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 29 February 2008, the Standards Commission wrote to the responsible person of each accounting unit enclosing a Certificate of Monetary Donations/Statutory Declaration form. In recognition of the fact that the political donations accounts of some accounting units may not have been active during 2007 a separate form (Form 2) was also enclosed. Where a political donations account was not active during 2007, 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 2007.

Table 4 below gives details of the number of accounting units of each party contacted by the Standards Commission in 2008. The Standards Commission is still pursuing those accounting units which have not provided a return.

The Standards Commission continues to experience difficulties in supervising this part of the legislation. It has referred to these difficulties in its annual report for 2006. The Standards Commission is aware that a contributory factor is that in some cases branches of political parties are slow to inform party headquarters of the receipt of a donation. The Standards Commission considers that this part of the legislation could be improved if the responsible person of a branch of a political party was required to notify the Standards Commission where 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 an onerous and possibly unfair responsibility on appropriate officers to notify the Standards Commission of branches of the party which have received donations in excess of €126.97.

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