Fine gael had not changed its opposition to corporate donations to political parties, Mr Fintan Coogan (FG) said. He was responding to a statement by the Minister for the Environment and Local Government, Mr Dempsey, that ongoing discussions between the political parties revolved around limiting the size of such donations.
The Minister was speaking in the committee stage debate on the Electoral (Amendment) Bill. He declined to accept Fine Gael and Labour amendments to prohibit acceptance of donations from business sources.
The amendments were not pressed to a vote, as the issue of corporate donations is to be revisited when the committee stage debate is resumed.
Expressing disappointment at the Minister's stance, Mr Coogan said it was unfortunate that Mr Dempsey did not share Fine Gael's view that the relationship between big business and politics must be broken.
Mr Dempsey said the Bill would be amended by the Government. Every public representative would be required to deposit donations received for political purposes into a special donation account, so that if in years to come someone claimed that money received had been a political donation, its non-declaration would constitute an offence.
The requirement to have a special account would apply to all political parties at all levels and to campaign groups which accepted donations for political purposes.
Mr Dempsey warned against the danger of totally restricting political parties in terms of funding for election campaigns. The media tended to think that his party was paranoid about them.
"Maybe sometimes we are, but we happened to be the recipient of a favourable media verdict prior to the last general election.
"If political parties have not got sufficient funds at their disposal, be it taxpayers' or otherwise, to get their message across between elections, and particularly during elections, we are, in a sense, as politicians handing over to the media the role of getting the message of political parties across. We can all say that the media are fair and very unbiased. Nobody said that after the last general election in relation to one newspaper group."
The mantra of banning corporate donations was not as simple as people were trying to make out. He agreed with the principle of having a system where there could be no reasonable perception that business had any more influence over politicians than social welfare recipients, the unemployed, the poor, or anybody else.
Mr Dempsey said that corporate donations could not be got nowadays. They had generally dried up over the last two or three years.