Derek Nolan (Galway West, Labour)

We should not forget the context of the last general election when the people made their choice about the new Government. One of the major themes of the election campaign was a sense that people wanted change not only in personnel and parties but also in ethics and the type of politics parliamentarians pursued. The Bill goes a long way towards meeting that desire in the two areas it addresses, namely, corporate donations and party funding based on candidate gender.

In regard to corporate donations, the people believe the size of an individual's cheque book should have nothing to do with democracy. It should be a case of one person, one vote, regardless of how much money an individual has in the bank. This legislation copperfastens that concept. I am delighted that the figures set out in the Bill were originally set out in the manifesto on which I campaigned. The all-party support offered to the Bill shows that the political system has received the message.

We are in the midst of an economic crisis of unprecedented scale. This period is second only to the Civil War in terms of the difficulty of being a public representative because of the challenges people face and the strains on our system of government. The Bill attempts to outlaw one of main causes of the crisis, namely, the undue influence of people with money over government policy. The major cause of the banking collapse which has cost the State in excess of €64 billion and wiped out shareholder value for thousands of pensioners was a cosy relationship between Fianna Fáil and business interests. Nobody would disagree with the contention that a small clique at the top of Irish society used their money to buy influence over elected representatives through supporting party functions. The economy was shaped by property reliefs and property was seen as the only viable economic course, even as the rest of the world looked at our property bubble with amazement. Such was the influence of money that the property bubble went unquestioned. I note that for a number of years limits have applied to the amount that people can donate. The cap is being reduced from €6,000 to €2,500. Given how much was bought for €6,000, imagine what would have happened if the limit had been €50,000 or €100,000.

The Bill is important not only for its practical implications but also for sending the signal that the Government wants to construct a different regime. The restriction on corporate donations is welcome, as is the corporate donations register. Openness and transparency are what people want above all else. Even if they cannot access the information, the Bill provides the information in order that others can highlight it and make sure the media and public get to scrutinise these issues, which is very important.

The personal limits for donations have also been reduced, which is good. Personal donations cannot be banned because of a constitutional provision. My own campaigns are funded largely by family, friends and political supporters making very small donations. That is to be encouraged rather than denigrated as being the same as the actions of people who are buying access. Those who participate in the electoral system and help to fund politics through fundraising or through donating €100 ought not to be put in the same group or denigrated as being the same as those who have bought access for business reasons or self-gain. It is important we make that distinction.

The linking of State funding of political parties with the number of candidates of either gender at general elections is covered by the Bill and its consequences will kick in at the next general election. Whether quotas are the way to go is debated by the Government parties and in society. My instinctive reaction is that quotas are not the way to go, except when the facts cannot be ignored. It is a fact that of 166 Deputies only a few are women who are so capable. This must be remedied.

I have been involved in politics since I was 18 or 19 years. When I was in NUI Galway, during freshers' week, we would try to get people involved in politics and the party. The proportion who would sign up reflected the ratio of women to men in this Chamber. There would always be a figure of approximately 80% to 85% of young men who would sign up to join a political party. There was no barrier in place and no one was saying women were not welcome; all a person had to do was sign his or her name, but even at that earlier stage, many more men would come forward. Arguments made against this include that there are few examples of successful female politicians, but that is not the case. When I was at university, the leader of one of the parties was a woman, the President was a capable and admired woman and there were other women involved in politics. If we are to solve the issue of gender representation in the democratic structures, we have a long way to go to make sure women feel politics is for them.

This goes back to how we educate children and condition young girls, even in the media. Society has not followed up on the feminist and equality agenda in the media and through the acceptance of change to the extent we sometimes think it has. We should look at the education system, the media and a much broader range of areas to encourage the change we need to see in this House because it must be reflected first in broader society. We can still see it in universities today, where some courses are exclusively male dominated such as engineering, while others such as the social sciences are predominantly attended by females. While the Bill is good and will encourage parties to do their bit, it is not enough. More work needs to be done and organisations which fight for equality and which still state the feminist cause is not complete are not getting the hearing they deserve. There is an acceptance that it is done and the problem was solved in the 1990s. That is not accurate or fair and there is more work to be done.

The Bill, if anything, will change the dynamic here. I hope it will create a new atmosphere that will spread to other areas of society. It would be ideal if it had happened the other way around, that we had got the fundamentals right and they had worked their way through to the Oireachtas. That is not happening or, if it is, it is happening far too slowly.

The Bill is quietly revolutionary in its two proposals. In what it does with corporate donations, it sends a clear signal that no longer will the body politic accept that there can be undue influence exerted by a small clique of those with money, that every citizen is equal, that everyone can participate on a level playing field and that one person, one vote is the cornerstone of how we view and accept influence. The gender quotas will send a proper signal and sometimes sending the signal is the important thing to do.

Not all influence is exerted by money or donations; it can be exerted by favours, cliques and introductions. Let us not confine the debate on ethics in public life to the idea of corporate donations because they are only one small part of this. We must also remember that we cannot legislate for a moral compass. We cannot legislate for someone to follow the rules, declare donations and account for them. Just because we have legislation that will restrict donations, we should not pretend money will not find its way into the system in other ways or through the brown envelope culture. While this is welcome and sends a clear signal, we must not lose sight of the broader picture.

I commend all those speakers who have spoken positively about this, realising the change in direction it is signalling. It is something to be proud of, something we all promised and that the people want.

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