Sinn Féin has published its audited annual head office accounts for 2002, denouncing those who claim it is part-funded by criminal activity and insisting it has nothing to hide.
The party's director of finance, Mr Des Mackin, and a representative of the party's auditors, Mr John Kinsella of Kinsella, Mitchell Grimes and Associates, briefed reporters from the State's three daily broadsheet newspapers on the accounts yesterday.
He said the party was publishing its accounts because of persistent charges from political opponents that it receives illegally obtained money.
Mr Kinsella said the party made a €4,000 settlement with the Revenue Commissioners in 2002 after a tax audit which examined the party's accounts for the previous five years. The payment covered an underpayment of tax for what Mr Kinsella said were routine matters that emerged during the audit. Details of the settlement were not published at the time as the settlement amount was well under the €17,700 threshold, above which the Revenue Commissioners publish such settlements. Since then the party received a tax clearance certificate for 2002, as it had in 2001.
Yesterday Sinn Féin published separate accounts for the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which it is obliged to produce for the Revenue Commissioners in each jurisdiction. It also produces a consolidated all-island set of accounts for its own ard comhairle, which it also made public yesterday. These sets of accounts relate to 2002 and make comparisons with 2001.
Like those of all political parties in the Republic, the accounts cover the party's head offices, and do not reflect the income and expenditure by local Sinn Féin organisations. Mr Mackin insisted these are substantially self-financing through local fundraising, although some get financial assistance from head office.
The head office accounts were "very heavily audited". Asked if it would not be easy to inject illegally obtained funds into local sections of the party, he accepted that there was no external monitoring of spending outside election time. However, he rejected claims from other parties that Sinn Féin's local organisations appear to be inexplicably well funded, and said that the Revenue Commissioners could audit any unit of the party at any time.
"Our whole party is based on voluntary activism", he said. "We don't have to pay people to put our posters up, or to staff our offices. We have never hired a public relations company and never will. We save huge costs at election time through printing everything centrally while the other parties get material printed locally."
He said Sinn Féin has 62 full-time salaried employees. Of these, 16 are paid by head office in Dublin and 13 by head office in Belfast. The five TDs each employ a constituency assistant, paid for by the State, while the 24 MLAs and four MPs in the North have a personal assistant each on the same basis.
Some of the head office employees worked as regional officers and so were based outside Dublin. However, the party's 16 constituency offices around the State were all staffed by volunteer workers. Recent claims by political opponents that the party paid staff in these local offices were untrue, he said.
Sinn Féin staff were all paid a wage of €500 gross per week. Oireachtas members had their salaries paid into their constituency organisations and then received a cheque for the equivalent of €500 gross each week. They were also entitled to keep their Oireachtas expenses.
The party says it has 16 offices around the State, contrary to claims from other parties that it has substantially more. The offices it lists are in Ballyfermot, Cabra, Carrickmacross, Cavan, Clonmel, Cork city, Drogheda, Dundalk, Finglas, Galway city, Monaghan, Navan, Sligo, Tallaght, Tralee and Waterford.
About half of these offices were rented and the rest are being purchased under mortgage. The rent and mortgage payments were funded locally. He gave the example of Councillor Joe Reilly in Navan, who had a number of party members paying direct debits each week to pay the mortgage on an office there.
The party owns its two buildings in Parnell Square, Dublin; number 44 having been purchased in 1911 and number 58 in the mid-1980s. The all-island accounts show Sinn Féin headquarters' income at €1,572,990 for 2002. Of this, €789,975 was received by the party in the Republic, with €783,015 received in Northern Ireland.
The accounts for the Republic show a substantial fall in income from donations to just €40,321 in 2002 from €85,822 in 2001. This, said Mr Mackin, reflected the ban introduced on the receipt of donations from abroad. However, the Government funding that arose from the election of five Sinn Féin TDs last year more than offset this. Sinn Féin received €547,376 from the State last year, bringing its total income in the Republic to €789,975 in 2002 compared to €500,386 in 2001.