Mary White (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)

I wish to share my time with Deputies Niall Collins and Peter Kelly.

I am delighted to welcome the Electoral (Amendment) Bill to the House. The legislation is above and beyond what the Green Party secured in the programme for Government and demonstrates our party's strong commitment to clean, transparent and accountable politics and elections. If we do not have elections run on fair and transparent rules, we end up with a political culture shaped by money, corporate agendas and unfairness, and those with the deepest pockets have the potential to spend their way towards election victory. This legislation will establish a level playing field at local election time and, in that context, it is very significant. We should have had such limits at previous local elections, and I hope there will be more initiatives from my colleague, the Minister, Deputy Gormley, to break the link between big money or corporate money and politics in general.

The most important aspect of the Bill — the spending limits for candidates — strikes a fair balance in setting realistic limits on expenditure incurred by candidates, particularly in this fast-moving, communications-heavy era. There are now many demands on candidates: the visual presence of the person; posters; technological communications; the world wide web; mobile phone communications; e-mails; and, in recent years, blogging, including putting tweets up on Twitter. There is an endless amount of promotion in which candidates can take part. However, for the biggest local authority electoral areas, €15,000 money is a fair cap.

Section 6 provides for the Minister to amend the limits as required. A certain amount of fluidity is important for the future because costs, like everything else, will change. Sections 7 and 8 makes agents and other designated people accountable for their actions in dealing with the expenses of candidates. We all have election agents or campaign managers who look after us during elections, and they too must be included in the Bill to make sure there is no siphoning off of money to indemnify a candidate. I am pleased that the legislation provides for this.

The Local Elections (Disclosure of Donations and Expenditure) Act 1999 is to be amended by the insertion of a Part IIIA which outlines how the expenditure can be divided between a candidate and the candidate's party; this is done in a comprehensive fashion. Section 21 prevents candidates from making advance payments to, for example, poster companies or literature printers in order to hide the full extent of their expenditure. That is important in the interests of transparency.

My local authority colleagues will be pleased with section 5, which requires local authorities' annual reports to outline the total spend of all candidates. Giggles have been heard from the media in regard to the amount spent by individual candidates.

I hope this legislation can be used as a springboard for tightening spending limits in general elections. It has been argued this will be more difficult to achieve because of the uncertainty surrounding the timing of general elections but ways of regulating can be introduced to ensure candidates and their agents monitor the amount they spend on election material in a given calendar month. When an election is called, they would know that somewhere between three and five weeks of campaigning remain and would therefore deduct what they have spent thus far in that month from the total limit of spending allowed within a 60-day period. I encourage the Minister to consider such a provision.

This Bill demonstrates the Green Party's commitment to ensuring that elections are free and fair and that spending caps allow all candidates, including those with the deepest pockets, an equal chance.

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