30/04/03 - Donations disclosed by TDs, Senators and MEPs for 2002

Part 4. Donation Statements and Statutory Declarations received in respect of 2002 from persons who made donations to a political party / members of a political party in 2002

An important aspect of the electoral legislation is the obligation attaching to individual donors to furnish a Donation Statement in certain circumstances. The Donation Statement must be accompanied by a Statutory Declaration. Section 24(1A) of the 1997 Act, as introduced by section 6 of the Electoral (Amendment) Act, 1998, provides that a person who makes donations in a calendar year, the aggregate value of which exceed €5,078.95, to:

(i) two or more persons who, when the donations were made, were members of the same political party, or

(ii) one or more persons and to the political party of which such person or persons were members when the donations were made to them,

must furnish a Donation Statement to the Standards Commission showing the aggregate value of the donations, the political party concerned and the name, description and address of each recipient. The donor is required to furnish the statement irrespective of whether the donations are also required to be disclosed by the recipient.

This provision is intended to achieve the disclosure of multiple donations made by a person to different members and/or organs (e.g. headquarters and branches) of the same political party which might not otherwise fall to be disclosed because the value of the individual donations might be below the disclosure thresholds applying to the particular recipients. A related amendment to the 1997 Act removed the obligation which had attached to Appropriate Officers of political parties to enquire of every organ and member of the party (elected and unelected) to establish if they had received a donation of any kind or value, to aggregate the values of all donations received from the same donor and to make a disclosure if the total value of donations received from the same donor exceeded €5,078.95 in a calendar year.

It remains the case, however, that, as well as providing details of donations valued at more than €5,078.95 received by party headquarters, Appropriate Officers are required to make the necessary enquiries and to disclose any single donation, exceeding a value of €5,078.95, received by a subsidiary organisation of the party. If the same person makes a donation valued at more than €5,078.95 to a subsidiary organisation and also makes a donation to party headquarters, the values of the donations should be aggregated by the Appropriate Officer for disclosure purposes.

In relation to 2002, two individuals furnished Donation Statements under section 24 (1A) of the 1997 Act, namely, Mr. Alan G. Graham, 2 Victoria Road, Rathgar, Dublin 6 and Mr Bobby Molloy, St Mays, Rockbarton, Salthill, Galway. Details are provided in Table 19 attached.

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