Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am very surprised at the Minister of State being sucked into this stroke and I am shocked at his statement because this is a new avenue of funding for political parties and he should acknowledge that. Lottery permits are allowed. Indeed, individuals and businesses can apply for lottery permits but the key difference is that to get a lottery permit you do not go to court. You get it through the Garda. The maximum value of a ticket is €10 and the maximum prize fund is €5,000. This is where Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, but Fianna Fáil in particular, were snookered because they sell their tickets for €75 and €80. The Minister of State should acknowledge that the Government's amendment to allow a political party to apply to the District Court for a lottery licence is a new avenue because that is exclusively held for charitable bodies and philanthropic bodies. He knows that, we know that; that is what the law says. He is changing the law to allow for political parties to be able to apply to the courts. That brings us to the unlawful fundraising that Fianna Fáil was involved in last year, raising over €0.5 million that will be spent on influencing the electoral process. As Minister of State with responsibility for the matter, I ask him to comment. Fianna Fáil applied to the court on two occasions, once in April and then September. They received a lottery licence on both occasions from the court. They applied to the District Court. Fianna Fáil knows well because in 1980 it was brought to the High Court by the Garda when the Garda objected saying that it was neither a charity nor a philanthropic body. It went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court judgment of Gurhy v.Goff made it clear that Fianna Fáil is neither a philanthropic body nor a charity. For Fianna Fáil to fill in an application before the courts – and I have a sample of the application form - and state that the proceeds will go to Fianna Fáil, that is, a charitable body, is the very definition of misleading the court and is indeed a crime.

Thankfully, a citizen last year took a case against Fianna Fáil. As a result of their writing to Fianna Fáil and putting it on notice it did the right thing - it refunded all the money that had been raised until that point and cancelled the lottery so the September licence had no impact. However, what happened about the licence of April-May and the €500,000-plus that was raised in relation to that licence? We know that a lottery licence for a political party is unlawful. How do we know that? We know it because the Minister of State is bringing forward amendment No. 101 to make it lawful in the future. It was unlawful previously.We also know that the form states two things. One is that at least 25% of all proceeds shall be retained to the holder and not less shall than 25% shall be allocated to charitable or philanthropic purposes. That is a requirement on the dodgy licence that Fianna Fáil got at the time. To our knowledge it has not paid a penny to a charity which again is in breach of the law. If this was Sinn Féin which had raised €500,000 through a licence that went to the court, having been taken to the courts during the 1980s by An Garda Síochána to say that it was neither a charity nor a philanthropic body so it could not get the licence and then it did it again, there would be “Prime Time” specials about it. That is the reality.

The Minister of State has responsibility for political spending and all the rest. I am asking him to make a statement on this because it is a very serious charge. The only reason that this measure is before this House today, let us be clear, is because Fianna Fáil got caught out when it tried to do it a second time. It broke the law; it raised €500,000 through an unlawful mechanism and it will use that money for political discourse in elections and whatnot. This is a stroke. It has not come out of campaigning and all the rest. It cannot raise money at the level that it wants to. It cannot sell €75 tickets. It cannot have prize funds of more than €5,000. Therefore the Minister of State has a responsibility to acknowledge that this is a new source of funding for political parties. For lottery permits, we can apply to the Garda but there are limits - €10 is the maximum we can charge for a ticket and €5,000 is the maximum weekly prize. Political parties cannot go near lottery licences. There is a very serious issue that the Taoiseach dodged yesterday but he will not get away with this. Huge amounts of money were raised by a political party in this State unlawfully. Now the Minister of State is coming forward to do the dirty work to make it lawful in the future for them to have their national draws. The Minister of State should be asking questions. If he wants to bring forward legislation with proper scrutiny then that is not a problem. Let us scrutinise it. However, he also has a responsibility to ask why he is being used in this way. Why is he being asked to clean up the mess of Fianna Fáil? Furthermore, as Minister of State with responsibility for this, can he tell us what happened to the €500,000 that was supposed to go to charitable causes? Has Fianna Fáil provided that to charitable causes? Has it handed it over? The reason it cancelled and refunded all of its national draw events for Christmas was that if it had gone to the court, the licence would have been rescinded. It knew that it was caught hook, line and sinker. It was breaking the law; it was caught. The problem is that the April licence had too long of a timeframe before the citizen was aware of the issue. That should not absolve the Taoiseach, the party in government, the Green Party which shares Government with it and the Minister of State having responsibility in this issue from dealing with this matter.

As I said, if the shoe was on the other foot, many column inches would be written about this and many questions would rightly be asked of ourselves and others, but we hear a deafening silence from the Green Party and the Minister of State on this.

See this speech in context