Ethics:A "buffer period" of at least a year to prevent local authority and other officials moving to related private sector jobs would be introduced by the Green Party if in power after the general election.
Conference delegates backed a motion from Wicklow candidate Deirdre de Búrca to ban all corporate donations to politicians, use public funding and strictly limit spending between elections. Ms de Búrca also called for the remit of the Standards in Public Office Commission to be broadened to allow ethics complaints about local government to be made directly to it by the public or elected members and staff of local authorities.
The party's finance spokesman, Dan Boyle, who supported the proposals, said the Green Party existed "to challenge the cosy culture of complacent corruption that still permeates Irish politics". Pledging to implement these ethical standards, he said that if they were not honoured "they would devalue the whole point of the Green Party ever being in government".
In any 12-month period before a general election, all advertising and political literature would have to be accounted for, and not the current three weeks before an election. Before the election the party will introduce a political appointments Bill, to end a culture where "who you know determines more than any other factor whether you're appointed to public bodies", Mr Boyle said.
David Healy, candidate in Dublin North East, said he was a councillor during the "tribunal years" of the 1990s and when re-elected in 2004 he saw planning submissions being made by consultants who he knew were council officials in the 1990s.
Ministers did the same, leaving office and going directly on to the boards of major companies. "It is not acceptable in local politics and it is not acceptable at the core of Irish politics."
