He was coming home in a car with two party colleagues from a constituency meeting where he had been selected as the Sinn Féin candidate for the then upcoming 2016 general election.
A councillor who had represented the party for years at local level, the shift in gear of his involvement with Sinn Féin was, in fact, to be the catalyst for his leaving the party.
“I was in the car with two fellas, and they said, you know you are going to have to work for the average industrial wage, which at the time was about €30,000.”
He explained his family commitments to his party colleagues. “I said there is absolutely no chance in hell that I will be working as a TD and handing my money over to the party... There was actual shock in the car that I wasn’t disciplined enough to do what they wanted me to do.”
He polled well in the election but, to his relief, wasn’t elected.
Afterwards he had a bitter row with party headquarters.
He was able to recoup election expenses he had incurred from the exchequer, but the party wanted him to give it the money. He parted ways with Sinn Féin, but not amicably.
“When you fall out with Sinn Féin, they don’t let you go, they try to hammer you. There is a modus operandi. There is a whispering campaign started up against you first. There is no better party in the country for a whispering campaign.”
The former Sinn Féin councillor is one of three former Sinn Féin public representatives who spoke to The Irish Times about the party, but who would not speak on the record.
Over recent years Sinn Féin has been hit by a succession of controversies with elected members at local and national level leaving the party, sometimes making accusations of bullying.
“Every one of us that was hounded out of the party – there was about 30 of us at the time – we all supported each other because when a party like Sinn Féin comes after you it’s not a nice place to be.”
Another local politician who has left the party also said he became the target of damaging accusations, which he vehemently denied.
Pound for pound, he said, Sinn Féin, because of its activist ethos, is able to employ more people because they are willing to work for less
The general election candidate who failed to get elected, said the party was always asking for money.
“From the time I became a councillor, they were consistently looking for money. Money mad. Constantly money mad.”
While cash donations to a political party in the Republic cannot exceed €2,500 in any one year from a single donor, and the donations made by politicians to their party are registered with the Standards in Public Office Commission, the restrictions and the disclosure regime do not apply to cash donated to fund constituency operations, nor do they apply to TDs who use part of their salaries to employ constituency staff.
Sinn Féin is the richest political party on the island of Ireland, with approximately 200 staff and, according to its director of finance, Des Mackin, an extensive property network across the island.
The exact number of people employed by the party and its elected representatives is not clear, but is probably in excess of 200, he said.
Pound for pound, he said, Sinn Féin, because of its activist ethos, is able to employ more people because they are willing to work for less.
The general secretary of the party is paid €45,000 a year, about a third of what is earned by the secretary generals of the other major parties “in the 26 counties”.
Party accounts show the general secretary of Fine Gael is paid €143,550, while the general secretary of Fianna Fáil is paid €138,915.
The size of Sinn Féin’s property portfolio has never been revealed, but according to the senior party officer, it far exceeds anything owned by its political rivals.
Sinn Féin owns up to 50 properties in constituencies around the island, over and above the four properties in Dublin and Belfast owned directly by party headquarters, Mackin said.
Most of the properties are used as constituency offices, so the financial support elected representatives get from Dublin and London to help them rent office space, goes into the local constituency coffers and constitutes another way in which public funds contribute to the growing size of the Sinn Féin operation.
Sinn Féin MPs, who don’t sit in Westminster, still claim expenses, including office expenses, from the UK exchequer.
No other party has a network of constituency properties like that owned by Sinn Féin
A former party TD, who spoke off the record to The Irish Times, said the decision to leave the party created a financial crisis locally because the constituency lost the rental income it was getting from the State for the party-owned premises the TD had been using as a constituency office.
"Not all of the constituencies have properties, but in Northern Ireland there are constituencies that have two or three," Mackin said.
“We tried to tidy it up some years ago, but it was too difficult. In Belfast alone we’d have seven, easy. Nationally, I’d say it exceeds 40 or 50, easily.”
These properties are in addition to 44 and 58 Parnell Square West, Dublin, and 535 and 51/53 Falls Road, Belfast, which are owned centrally and declared in the party’s annual accounts.
By way of comparison, Fine Gael owns its headquarters building in Upper Mount Street, Dublin, and a small number of constituency properties. Fianna Fáil sold its headquarters on the same street some years ago, as part of a debt-clearing exercise, and has “a small number of properties” that are owned by local party units, a spokesman said. No other party has a network of constituency properties like that owned by Sinn Féin.
Billy Hampton
During the years when the Stormont Assembly was dormant, Sinn Féin's operation north of the Border lost some of its income. In October 2018, the party in Belfast took out a £300,000 loan from the Bank of Ireland.
“For a while there we were under pressure,” said Mackin. Then “Billy’s money came over the hill like the cavalry”.
"Billy" is the late William (Billy) Hampton, who left his substantial estate to Sinn Féin when he died in a public nursing home in Wales in 2018.
The Englishman, who was unmarried and had no children, inherited his wealth from his late father, who was a businessman and land owner in Fenstanton, Cambridgeshire.
The executors named in Hampton's will, which was written in 1997, were Mackin and the late senior republican, Joe Cahill. For years these two men were the party's national treasurers.
Mackin, working with the party’s solicitors, Ó Muirigh Solicitors, Belfast, is currently retrieving money from bank accounts formerly operated by Hampton, as well as selling off properties the Englishman owned.
It is illegal in the Republic for political parties to accept foreign donations, but Hampton was English and so could donate to parties in the UK.
UK Electoral Commission returns show the Hampton money being received by Sinn Féin in Belfast during 2019, as Mackin went through the process of realising Hampton’s estate.
The party got £500,000 in April, £1 million in May, two £50,000 amounts on two successive days in July, and £400,000 in September.
These lodgments total £2 million (€2.39m), and there will be more as the process of dealing with Hampton’s estate continues.
“The total in euro terms is probably going to be about €4 million, but it’s hard to be exact,” Mackin said.
Property is being sold in the UK, as is a small property in Ireland. Approximately €1 million is in the process of being released from a bank account in Singapore.
“That transfer should be done by the end of the month. The whole thing should be done by the end of the year.”
While living at one stage in a caravan in Cootehill, Co Cavan, "Billy opened up a credit union account, and there's about €6,000 in that. There's also pension stuff that has to be chased down".
Inheritances and payments from the public purse are not the only way Sinn Féin is funding its development.
US supporters
For decades, the party has been raising substantial sums of money from supporters in the United States. Official returns from the Friends of Sinn Féin organisation show the total raised since the 1990s has exceeded $15 million (€13.78m).
The organisation uses much of this money to fund lobbying in Washington DC for a united Ireland.
But the UK’s political funding law allows some of the money to be used in Northern Ireland, according to Mackin.
Foreign political donations are not allowed under UK law, but the prohibition only applies to donations in excess of £500.
“We saw that as an opportunity,” he said. “So the US donations are filtered and any that are, say, about $500 or less, can be used in the North. They go into a special dispersals account, and this has been agreed with the electoral commission.”
The law in the Republic precludes all foreign money.
“Way back, we brought the bulk of it [the American money] into here [the Republic]. It helped us build up the party a lot. It was a lot of money.”
A recent burst of more than 4,000 membership applications will mean another financial boost for the party, he said, based on the €10 membership fee.
And the substantial increase in Sinn Féin's representation in Leinster House following the general election, is more good news for the party's coffers and its ability to employ full-time activists.
Under the points system that operates in Leinster House, parties with larger representations get more funding for support staff. So Sinn Féin, with its increased stock of TDs, will now be able to employ more party activists in its press office, with these people being paid by the State.
And part of the salaries the new TDs will be paid may also be used to employ more Sinn Féin activists, if past practice is any predictor of future performance, while the State will also pay for political and secretarial assistants for each new Dáil representative.
Meanwhile, according to Mackin, the merchandising business operated by Sinn Féin, which sells items that celebrate the IRA and the republican struggle, is producing a profit for the first time in ages. During the general election campaign, the party’s “Come Out Ye Black and Tans” T-shirts (€19.99 each) were “flying”, he said.
