Annual Report 2006

Accounting Units

An "accounting unit" of a political party is 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.)

When an accounting unit receives a monetary donation in excess of €126.97, it 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 that account. By 31 March each year the responsible person of each accounting unit is required to furnish certain documentation to the Standards Commission concerning the accounting unit's political donations account. If there were no transactions on the account during the preceding year the responsible person confirms this fact in writing to the Standards Commission. If there were transactions on the political donations account during the preceding year, the responsible person must furnish to the Standards Commission a statement from the financial institution in which the political donations account is held, along 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.

As stated in the Standards Commission's Annual Report for 2005, an ongoing difficulty in supervising these provisions of the legislation is the failure to notify the Standards Commission where there has been a change of responsible person in an accounting unit. This leads to delays in furnishing the required statutory documentation. Although all of the documentation for 2006 was ultimately received, much of it was received after the statutory deadline, which is a contravention of the legislation. In early 2006, the Standards Commission wrote to 158 accounting units which were identified by the relevant political parties. 66 accounting units furnished the required statutory documentation by the statutory deadline of 31 March 2006. 90 accounting units failed to furnish their statutory documentation on time. Two accounting units were notified to the Standards Commission after the statutory deadline. Details of those accounting units which did not furnish their statutory documentation on time and the dates on which the statutory documents were finally received are contained in Appendix 1. The Standards Commission did not refer any of these offences to the Gardaí/DPP. The Standards Commission will, however, consider referring any such future offences to the prosecuting authorities.

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