Annual Report 2005

Accounting Units

An accounting unit, in relation to a political party, 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 appropriate officer of a political party is required to provide the Standards Commission with the name and address of each accounting unit of the party, including the name of its "responsible person". The responsible person is the treasurer or any other person responsible for dealing with donations to the unit.

On receipt of a monetary donation in excess of €126.97, the accounting unit 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 an 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.

The provisions of the Electoral Acts relating to accounting units came into effect on 1 January 2002. The Standards Commission has encountered a number of difficulties in supervising this part of the legislation:

• The Standards Commission estimates that the number of branches/subsidiary organisations of political parties currently operating may be in excess of 4,000. The number of accounting units currently notified to the Standards Commission by all political parties is 154. There has been a general election, a European Parliament election and local elections since the introduction of these provisions of the legislation for which a certain amount of fund-raising would have been carried out by local party organisations. The Standards Commission considers, therefore, that there is a significant number of accounting units which have not been notified to it.
• There are no offences in the Electoral Acts for failure by an appropriate officer to notify the Standards Commission of the existence of an accounting unit. Similarly, there is no offence for failure on the part of a branch/subsidiary organisation to notify the appropriate officer that it is an accounting unit. In the absence of such sanctions there may be little or no incentive to comply with these provisions of the legislation.
• There is no offence for failure by the responsible person of an accounting unit to open a political donations account.
• In some cases appropriate officers have notified the Standards Commission that a particular branch or unit is an accounting unit when, in fact, it is not, i.e. it has not received any donation in excess of €126.97 since 1 January 2002.
• An ongoing difficulty is the failure to notify the Standards Commission where there has been a change of responsible person in an accounting unit. This delays the process of submitting the required statutory documentation, some of which may be received after the statutory deadline, which is a contravention of the legislation.

The Standards Commission recognises that the requirements of these provisions of the legislation create a significant administrative burden for appropriate officers, particularly those of the larger political parties. The Standards Commission also recognises that there has been a concerted effort by some appropriate officers to identify the branches/subsidiary organisations within their parties which are accounting units. The Standards Commission considers, however, that it is incumbent on all appropriate officers to have sufficient procedures in place to ensure that they are aware of all accounting units and their responsible persons. Also changes of responsible persons must be notified to them promptly to allow such notification to be forwarded to the Standards Commission.

The Standards Commission considers that the introduction of a sanction for branches/subsidiary organisations who do not notify appropriate officers of the receipt of a donation exceeding €126.97 and details of their responsible person would be of benefit in this regard.

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