ASSESSORS FROM the Council of Europe are meeting political parties here as part of a survey of legislation, practices and procedures in relation to funding. This is the first time the council has carried out an assessment of this issue in Ireland.
The team of evaluators is preparing a report on behalf of the Council of Europe Groups of States Against Corruption (Greco) which includes Ireland and was established in 1999 to monitor compliance with anti-corruption standards by member states.
Greco also seeks to improve the capacity of member states to fight corruption, “through a dynamic process of mutual evaluation and peer pressure”.
Membership of Greco is not confined to the Council of Europe and the US is among the 46 member states.
The Greco evaluators are Elena Masnevaite from the law faculty of the Vilnius University in Lithuania; Fernando Jimenez Sanchez, department of political science, University of Murcia, Spain and Laura Sanz-Levia from the Greco Secetariat.
It is understood that the group yesterday met representatives of the Standards in Public Office Commission; Transparency International’s Irish branch; the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission; clerk of the Dáil, Kieran Coughlan and officials from the Department of Justice.
Tomorrow, the second of their three-day visit, the evaluators are expected to meet representatives of Fianna Fáil; the Labour Party; Green Party treasurer Martin Nolan and officials from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government.
A Fine Gael spokesman said the evaluators had not requested a meeting: “We would be delighted to meet them, but they have not actually sought a meeting with us.”
A Sinn Féin spokesman said he was not aware of any request for a meeting.
A separate team visited Ireland earlier this week to assess the level of criminal sanctions applied for corruption offences.
The group met representatives of the Attorney General’s Office; the Director of Public Prosecutions; the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment; the Criminal Assets Bureau and the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement.