Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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Question 26: To ask the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government his plans to introduce spending limits for elections and constitutional referendums in advance of the forthcoming presidential election. [6913/11]

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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The Programme for Government contains a commitment to having spending limits for all elections and constitutional referendums, including for a period in advance of scheduled local, European, general and presidential elections.

Part IV of the Electoral Act 1997 provides for an election expenses regime to be applied to candidates at a presidential election. While the monetary amounts in respect of the spending limit were not specified in the 1997 Act, provision was made for this to be effected by Ministerial order. This was done in July 2004 in advance of the Presidential Election scheduled for later that year. Statutory Instrument No. 441 of 2004 set the spending limit at €1,300,000, and this is the amount that currently applies.

At the moment there are no spending limits in place for constitutional referendums. In bringing forward proposals to amend the relevant legislation, which I intend to progress as soon as possible, I will have regard to the report prepared in March 2009 by the Standards in Public Office Commission on the operation of provisions applying to third parties at the first referendum on the Lisbon Treaty held in 2008. Third parties are typically campaign groups and are defined under section 22(2)(aa) of the Electoral Act 1997. The report recommended that third parties and political parties should be required to disclose details of expenditure on referendum campaigns. It also recommended that information should be made available on the sources of funding available to both third parties and political parties.