Shane Ross (Independent)

This is a difficult problem and I am not sure on which side of the fence I stand. In theory, one should be able to spend a large amount of public money in defence of democracy, which makes a worthy target for public funds. We do have to pay a price for democracy. The question is how much should one be able to spend and whether that democratic funding should be supplemented by other funding.

My feeling, having watched the funding of political parties over many years, is that corporate funding is not to the benefit of political parties. It does not benefit the people, the Dáil or the Seanad. I got tired of reading annual reports of corporate companies, particularly public companies, over many years. Companies like AIB, Bank of Ireland, CRH and Smurfit all said they gave money to political parties because they were great believers in democracy. They believed they did it for that reason. This was a lot of cant and everybody knows it.