Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)

I move amendment No. 6:

In page 7, to delete lines 1 to 11 and substitute the following:

"(b) in paragraph (aa) (inserted by section 49(b)(ii) of the Act of 2001) by—

(i) substituting "€100" for "£100" in the definition of "accounting unit",

(ii) substituting "€100" for "£100" in the definition of "third party", and

(iii) inserting the following definitions:

" 'company' means a company established under the Companies Acts;

'corporate donor' means—

(i) a body corporate,

(ii) an unincorporated body of persons, or

(iii) a trust,

which makes a donation, and for the purpose of this definition a body corporate and any subsidiary thereof shall be deemed to be one person;".".

This group of amendments will have the effect of reducing the threshold for receipt of anonymous donations to €100, the threshold for opening a political donations account to €100 and to €100 the threshold whereby a third party is recognised as such and must be registered. A similar donation threshold of €100 will also apply in the definition of "accounting unit" for a political party. Each of the amendments flows from the recommendations of the Mahon tribunal regarding the treatment of anonymous donations. The tribunal recommended that anonymous donations of more than €55 to electoral candidates or elected representatives, or of more than €175 to political parties be banned. Currently all anonymous donations of more than €126.97 are banned. I agree with the principle behind the tribunal's recommendation but accepting the proposal would mean that the anonymous donation threshold for parties would increase, while the threshold for individuals would decrease. As I do not favour increasing the threshold for parties, a reasonable way of implementing this recommendation is by reducing the threshold for all anonymous donations to €100.

Amendment No. 31, tabled by Deputy Brian Stanley on behalf of Sinn Féin, is being discussed with this group because it seeks to amend the same section of the Bill as Government amendment No. 30, albeit for a different purpose. The Deputy's amendment is one of seven Sinn Féin amendments which seek to remove from the Bill the provisions dealing with corporate donations. The purpose of the amendments is to ban corporate donations altogether, but, as I explained on Second Stage, this is not constitutionally feasible. I will be opposing the amendment for this reason.

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