Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit as ucht a chúpla focal agus as ucht an tacaíocht don rún freisin. In bringing this motion before the House I sought to raise an issue that needs to be addressed by this House.

I agree with Members who expressed regret that we have used our Private Members' time to do this. I agree that it is regrettable that we have had to do it. I sought to do so on a party-to-party basis which is why this is being brought by the Fine Gael group. I did not seek to make it personal. I regret that Senator Ó Donnghaile did. He will, however, be pleased to know that the army of "shinnerbots", as we refer to them, the hordes of people who are online and constantly attack anybody who espouses a view contrary to Sinn Féin’s credo, have been very active. By the time I sat down there were many alerts on my phone which were a prelude to what he had to say himself. The confluence of words that were used by Senator Ó Donnghaile and the ones used online is perhaps a coincidence, but it is striking. Of course, they were also attacking me in respect of the issue that Senator Ó Donnghaile raised in his contribution about a complaint that was made about me to the Standards in Public Office Commission in 2010 or 2011. I thought it was somewhat cowardly of Senator Ó Donnghaile to essentially pose the question to me and then suggest that I was unable or unwilling in some way to answer it. I can assure the House that I do not have to answer it because the 2012 annual report of the Standards in Public Office Commission, on pages 22 and 23 if the Senator wishes to know, specifically exonerates me of any wrongdoing in respect of that matter. SIPO said there was no basis on which to pursue the matter. It wrote to the then Minister about it and concluded with the comment that there was a legal basis for what happened. I do not have anything to hide and like Senator McDowell, I am all about transparency. That appears to be at variance with the views of the Sinn Féin Members of this House, or should I say the Sinn Féin Member of this House, because only a single Senator from Sinn Féin has turned up to address this issue.

This is an issue and is something we should discuss. I believe it is something that almost all of us agree on because everybody in this House appears to agree that there must be transparency in political funding, that there must be an opportunity for the Standards in Public Office Commission to verify that all parties in this country, all parties in these Houses, are abiding by the same set of rules. Sinn Féin does not agree with that. Sinn Féin essentially puts itself beyond regulation in the attitude with which it approaches this donation which is an eye-wateringly large amount of money by anybody’s standards. It is an amount of money that would require 1,600 ordinary donors to any other party in this House. Sinn Féin deems itself beyond regulation – it does not need to comply with the rules of this State, it can go beyond that and through a sleight of hand, deem itself to be, for the purposes of this donation, a six-county party and a 26-county party.

There are serious questions to be answered on this in circumstances where, I think, every other party in this House struggles to fund its activities. I can tell the House that Fine Gael Deputies, Senators, councillors and activists throughout the country are currently desperately trying to sell tickets for the one opportunity we are going to have to raise funds this year. Fine Gael will beg, borrow and steal – from its members of course, not in any nefarious way - to fund its activities in the next election. In fact it will borrow to do that, hoping to be able to recoup that money in the following years by fundraising from its members and its supporters. That is the way we all operate but Sinn Féin seems to think it does not have to operate that way. It has already been said by other Members that it is the wealthiest party in this State by some distance. It is blessed with massive sets of assets and massive cash reserves. I suspect they are what fund the kinds of activities I referred to at the beginning of this debate.

Without wishing to draw the matter out any further, there are, as I have said, serious questions to be answered here. What is perhaps most remarkable about the contribution from the single Sinn Féin Member who attended this debate is that none of those questions was answered. No explanation has been given and no assurance has been given. Therefore, at the end of this debate we remain in the same position as the Standards in Public Office Commission, in that we do not know and have been given no assurance that this enormous amount of money which is coming into Sinn Féin’s coffers will not be used to compete with Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, the Labour Party, the Green Party and all of the other parties that make up the Houses of the Oireachtas. We do not have any of those assurances because they cannot be given. As was said by Senator Seery Kearney, this is particularly the case in the realm of social media and online content which we cannot control. That is the reality and it is on that basis I commend the motion to the House. I hope Senators will support it.