Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is selling us a narrative that suits his own ends, but what are the facts? Is it not a fact that there has been a breach of both the donation and expenditure rules that everyone in this House is bound by? The Act insists that no expenditure can be incurred at an election except by the agent or his or her nominee. The SIPO guidelines point out that it is an offence for a candidate or anybody else, including, for example, "a local branch of a political party", to incur expenses or make payments in connection with a candidate's campaign if this was not authorised by the agent. Was this unauthorised expenditure incurred during the Minister's 2016 election campaign and, if so, will the Minister notify SIPO of this breach of the Act?

This service was provided by six company employees in a company van but it was, in fact, provided by the shareholder, the company owner. The distinction is relevant because the law imposes a lower legal limit on corporate donations than on donations from individuals. This is the net point which goes to the heart of this whole farrago. Let us stop the pretence that this was not a corporate donation. One might think there was an effort going on to retrospectively regularise a highly irregular situation.

Third, the Minister said the two separate donations, which were an individual donation of the services of six company employees and a corporate donation of the use of a company van, were not made to him at all but to the Fine Gael constituency party in Dublin Central. This distinction is significant because there are higher limits for permissible donations to parties than donations to candidates. It is again an attempt to present the situation in a particular light. Is there any reality to this? Constituency parties have no role whatsoever in law in incurring expenditure during elections. Candidates incur expenditure and the agents of candidates account for and authorise that expenditure. It would be an offence for the constituency party to incur this expenditure. Is trying to drag the constituency party into the picture not just a red herring?

How about the estimate of the cost of the service? We know that the usual price charged for erecting and removing election posters in 2016 was about €5 per poster, with it costing €3 to put one up and €2 to take it down. If 1,000 posters were involved, which would be normal in a campaign, then the commercial value is closer to €5,000. The Minister might go some way to addressing the points about how many posters this organisation put up.

The guidelines are explicit that where a price charged for a service is less than the usual commercial price, then the difference between the usual commercial price and the lower price is a political donation. Whether provided by an individual or by a company, the true value of this service seems to be way in excess of the donation limits. If that is so, does it not follow that what was received was a prohibited donation in excess of the donation limits? If so, should the Minister's amended declaration not also state that he received a prohibited donation, the value of which he has so far not returned to the donor?

Finally, if this expenditure was revalued at its full commercial price, would the Minister be in breach of the candidate expenditure limit for the 2016 general election? That is an important point. We are being told that an individual, his company and its staff provided a service during the Minister's election campaign which ended up being free of charge to him. The company's owner then decided to pay the staff himself. It was later decided that this payment of wages should be treated as a donation to the Fine Gael constituency party but not as a donation to the Minister, even though it is his face on the posters.

The long and the short of it, as far as donations are concerned, is that the Minister ended up as the recipient of a free service, which was a political donation. As far as expenditure is concerned, expenditure was incurred by a third party which was not authorised by the Minister's agent. These are the facts. I am pleased that the Minister has recused himself from having responsibility for the development of long-awaited ethics legislation, which the Labour Party has been campaigning for for eight long years.

From his previous time as Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, which was when this issue first came to his attention, the Minister will be familiar with Deputy Brendan Howlin's Public Sector Standards Bill 2015. The Bill would have given the Standards in Public Office Commission sufficient teeth and robustness to deal with the situations we are dealing with all the time that impact on trust and confidence in politics in this country. The Governments in which the Minister has served have waited for far too long. We are expecting the publication of draft legislation this year. We need to see that now. The situation in which the Minister finds himself and the transfer of functions to the Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, should not be used to further delay the publication of critical legislation to help to restore trust in politics in this country.

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