Thinking
Sir, - Ray Burke received £30,000 from Fitzwilton to fund his campaign, a donation that Fitzwilton claimed was to "support the democratic process". None of the other candidates in his constituency received the same money. Just how was this unbalance in the campaign a support for the democratic process? Surely it was the exact opposite, lessening the balance of information and policy formation between the various candidates, and giving Mr Burke an unfair advantage?
Fitzwilton and other donors never get past the platitudes and actually explain how the democratic process is supported by their generosity, rather than their choice selection of small pockets of activity within it.
Ben Dunne gave generously to Fine Gael during the last government and was entertained to three-hour dinners. Fair enough. But how many shop workers, opposed to Sunday opening and anxious to put their case, were entertained to such long meals, where such concerns may have come up when the small talk ran out over the coffee? Donations buy access, however much that is denied by both donor and recipient. This is anti-democratic. It is interesting to watch how donations to Fine Gael shrivelled up whey they left office. Surely being in or out of office should be irrelevant to donors, who only want to support the democratic process.
We are now informed that Ruairi Quinn, a TD for my own constituency, received £10,000 from a building firm, Treasury Holdings (June 12th). Mr Quinn tells us that he has since passed this money on to Labour Party head office, but no other TD in my constituency received money from the same firm. How can there be equal and fair competition at the next election when Mr Quinn will be able to use this money to get more of his selected information to me than his rivals? And this decided by Treasury Holdings. How does this serve me as a private citizen?
Stopping private donations to political parties will not stop the lack of fairness. There will still be front page editorials calling for payback, and vaguely critical articles by journalists like Bruce Arnold will still be spiked by editors protecting their employers' financial interests elsewhere. But at least, if the donations were stopped and all party funding came from the state and was distributed proportionally to their individual vote, the democratic process would be much fairer. And it would remove the stench of corruption that so many tribunals are at present investigating. And if Fitzwilton and the others still want to support the democratic process, can they not give the money to the central funding body to distribute it proportionally? Now that would be a genuine support. - Yours, etc., Enda Lynch,
Kingsland Park Avenue, Dublin 8.