Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. It is the first time that I have seen the Minister of State in the Chamber and I wish him the very best in his brief. I congratulate him on his stellar performance in getting elected to the Dáil and being appointed a Minister of State.

I strongly oppose this legislation. Its timing is unfortunate for its sponsors because it comes just as Deputy Nash has exposed correspondence between Standards in Public Office Commission, SIPO, and Sinn Féin, which displays in embarrassing detail how that party is more than happy to use partition to help it pocket a €4 million bequest. That funding loophole and others should be closed all right. Instead, this Bill seeks to take an existing narrow loophole and blow it wide open. This matter arises out of a High Court dispute between SIPO and Amnesty International Ireland centring on an interpretation of the phrase "political purposes" in the Electoral (Amendment) Act 2001. The Bill before us would change the definition of donations for political purposes to allow NGOs and campaigning organisations to accept unlimited donations from Ireland or abroad in between elections or referendum campaigns. Only donations made during an election or referendum campaign would have to comply with any donation restrictions. This would remove from limit or scrutiny large donations to campaigning organisations delivered up to the time that the election or referendum was called.

Amnesty received a donation of €137,000 from the Open Society Foundation, which is a Swiss front group for the Hungarian multibillionaire, George Soros. The explicit aim of that donation was that it be used to campaign to change the Irish law and Constitution in terms of abortion. Senator Pauline O'Reilly was right to refer to the referendum on the eighth amendment. I can certainly say, from my association with the pro-life campaign which worked very hard to protect unborn babies and mothers, that any donations that I was ever aware of came from Irish citizens. That was not the case with regard to Amnesty's largesse coming from George Soros and his Open Society Foundation. Amnesty claimed, ludicrously, that the donation was not for a political purpose. Hello? It was clearly stated by the Open Society Foundation what the donation was all about. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word "political" as meaning relating to the government or public affairs of a country, which makes things fairly clear. Therefore, a donation that is intended to influence or change Irish law, as the Amnesty donation clearly was, surely comes within that definition.

The sponsors of the Bill seem to think that a political purpose equals, for the most part, a party political or an electoral purpose. These are all very different things. The issue was not conclusively resolved by the High Court, so future donations might be similarly challenged by SIPO. Therefore, Amnesty has a huge vested interest in seeing this Bill pass so that all future foreign donations for political campaigning can be whitewashed, as does the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, which also supports this Bill. That group raised just €6,000 from Irish citizens in 2018 but was given more than €500,000 from foreign sources, including a €65,000 donation from the same Swiss front group which funds Amnesty.

While I wish Senator Ruane well and commend her on her diligence, perhaps she could please clarify for the record of this House whether Amnesty, the ICCL or any individuals connected to those groups were involved in any way in the drafting of this Bill. If so, it would be a disturbing development. It would mean that private organisations funded by foreign money are already seeking to influence directly a change in Irish law for their own financial benefit.

The explanatory memorandum says that treating the Amnesty donation and others like it as a donation for political purposes was an "unintended consequence" of ambiguous drafting in the 2001 Act. Surely it was a consequence that was directly intended. Do the Bill's sponsors seriously believe that the Oireachtas intended, in 2001, that foreign money would be allowed to flow into the country to campaign for changes in our law or Constitution in a completely unaccountable way? Why should third parties be given such light-touch treatment compared with political parties or Independent politicians with a democratic mandate?

If Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Labour Party or the Green Party wanted to mount a public campaign to change the law or Constitution, for argument's sake to introduce a constitutional right to housing, they would have to fund the campaign through donations from Irish citizens to a maximum of €2,500 per individual or just €200 from an Irish company. If this Bill were passed, a third party or so-called civil society group could be set up and campaign full throttle against such a proposal - against such a proposal, just to make the point easy to understand for some of its proponents - funded by unlimited money from unidentified domestic or foreign sources. Frankly, that would amount to little more than auction politics and the transfer of the democratic process to the highest bidder. It would be a scandal for our democracy.

Senators will have received an interesting submission on the Bill from Atheist Ireland, as Senator Kyne has said, one such civil society group and not one which I regularly quote. I have to say that I am experiencing a frissonof excitement as I quote it. In fact, it might do wonders for my social life once Covid is out of the way. Atheist Ireland make an interesting point when it says that the law as it stands:

... helps us, not hinders us, by trying to make democracy a battle of ideas not bank accounts. It does not prevent any civil society group from raising money. We just have to raise it in small donations from the many, not large donations from the few.This is good for democracy, not bad.

Fair play to Atheist Ireland for putting it so clearly. Does that not bring us to the nub of the issue?

As I mentioned earlier, the organisations supporting this Bill are groups which depend almost entirely on large foreign donations for their existence, drawing only tiny amounts from Irish citizens, so they have a vested interest in seeking this Bill to be passed so they can sustain themselves. It seems to me that it is wrong to give international financiers or big business, at home or abroad, such an advantage over ordinary Irish citizens and the political parties or individuals that they support with their votes or few quid. There is a vested interest in seeing this Bill passed. This Bill could do for Irish politics what the notorious Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision by the United States Supreme Court did for politics in the US. It could open the floodgates to large amounts of completely unaccountable and anonymous money being funnelled into Irish politics. That would be a seriously retrograde step, and I urge Senators to reject this Bill.