Rónán Mullen (Independent)

On this section, we must be honest about legislation concerning disclosure of donations in recent years. It has done a certain amount of good, perhaps even a great deal of good. The requirement to comply with the Standards in Public Office Commission requirements produces, and is conducive to, a culture of transparency and compliance among politicians. We must also admit that there has been a certain amount of fuzzy, if not cynical thinking about the relationship between money and politics. On Second Stage, I and another Senator referred to the fact that I had received a certain large amount of donations when I was running for election in 2007 and these were required to be disclosed under the legislation. That is true but it struck me at the time as amazing, and still does, that a politician can receive €100,000 in political donations but provided he or she receives them in denominations or amounts of less than €635 per donor on aggregate - one must aggregate the donations from any individual donor in any one year - he or she would not have to declare a penny. As a first-time politician, I went around in a transparent way and asked people who would like to see me get elected if they would make a large donation so that I would not have to spend the year fund-raising. I said I would disclose the donation because it would be in excess of €635 and I would therefore have to declare the donor's name. I had no problem with disclosing those donations but I have a major problem with the fact that a person could accumulate an unreal amount of money in donations and never have to declare a penny of it, simply because it was received in amounts of less than €635 per person.

It is interesting that this legislation does not propose to change this situation very much. If I am not mistaken, it simply proposes to bring the permitted figure down to €600. It will be at that point that one must declare a donation. Why is the figure not less? If we are really interested in transparency why is there not to be disclosure of any significant amount of money?

It seems there are three kinds of ways in which money can flow to politicians and this is relevant to section 6. There can be public funding which I believe to be dubious because much of the time it does not go towards fulfilment of the Member's duties but towards his or her electoral effort and electability over the longer term. It skews the system. There are corporate donations which are problematic because companies were not set up for this in the first place. Companies are set up, with limited liability and all suchlike provided for, to allow people to take risks and go into business and build up the economy. It was not the original intention that companies could influence politics by using their financial and economic muscle. There is a serious problem with that.

The least problematic area is that of non-corporate donations to politicians, provided there is transparency. I say that as one with a vested interest, as one who has declared donations. Speakers referred on Second Stage to my donations yet all but one that I declared were non-corporate. There was one corporate donation which was duly declared. A person who might not be the best speaker or politician in the world but who has done well in life might wish to put his or her personal resources at the disposal of a particular politician or political party whose ideals and aims and policies he or she admires and supports. That is an entirely legitimate enterprise provided there is full transparency.

Were it not for the fact that I would be accused of having a vested interest I would question more strongly the reduction in the amount of permitted donations, from £2,000 to €1,000. I would not lose any sleep over it - €1,000 is still a substantial amount of money - but this method seems the least egregious kind of donation. I speak of the non-corporate personal donation, provided there is transparency. However, we must do a great deal more than this Bill does in terms of transparency. I cite the example I gave earlier, of the reduction in the threshold only to €600. One can still receive anything up to that amount in any one year from any one source and one does not have to declare a penny of it.