PAYMENTS MADE by trade unions to political parties should be covered by a proposed ban on corporate donations to be introduced by the Government, Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney has said.
Speaking yesterday on the fallout from the publication of the Moriarty report, he said the Government had already given a commitment that it would end corporate donations. He said this would happen “in the not-too-distant future”.
However, asked on RTÉ Radio 1's This Weekprogramme whether the proposed ban would include donations made by trade unions, he said: "Yes, absolutely. As far as I am concerned, that is a corporate donation."
However, a spokesman for the Labour Party said yesterday that the issue of trade union donations had not been considered by the Government.
He said this issue would have to be looked at when the legislation on corporate donations to political parties was being drawn up.
The Labour Party spokesman said the Standards In Public Office Commission did not regard payments made by trade unions to constitute political donations. Rather, it considered them to be “affiliation fees”.
Any ban on trade union donations would hit the Labour Party particularly hard. It receives the bulk of all money paid to political parties by unions.
Last year the Labour Party said it would oppose proposals put forward by the then minister for the environment John Gormley of the Green Party to end trade union donations to political parties.
At the time, Labour said it had been founded by the trade union movement and had long, historic associations with it. However, it said in the past it had taken stances that were opposed by unions.
The party said at the time that the amount it received from the trade unions was very small and represented about 5 per cent of turnover.
The country’s largest trade union, Siptu, had a political fund of around €121,000 in 2007 and €117,000 in 2008 – the vast bulk of which would have gone to the Labour Party.
Mr Coveney said yesterday: “We believe and we have believed for some time that we should move politics away from an era whereby big business tried to buy influence in politics.
“If there are personal donations people want to make for relatively small amounts of money that will be allowed. But it will be a very transparent process.”
