Dr. Elaine Byrne:

It is really. We are still waiting on the Standards in Public Office Commission reports. Again, it is a missed opportunity by the current coalition Government not to have put the guidelines on party finance into place when it could have. It now allows that political parties are not obliged to make their annual reports available for public consumption until, in theory, after the 2016 general election. This allows, facilitates and enables the perception that something unorthodox is happening. Political parties should demonstrate their commitment to transparency, accountability and all those buzzwords by disclosing their accounts.