Fianna Fail could be "shamed" into banning corporate donations to political parties, now that Fine Gael had supported Labour Party legislation on the issue, Mr Ruairi Quinn has predicted.
The Labour Party leader yesterday welcomed the decision by Mr Michael Noonan to commit Fine Gael to banning corporate funding.
If there was anything to be learned from the work of the tribunals at Dublin Castle, he said, it was that politicians had to get rid of corporate donations.
As the Opposition parties united against corporate funding, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said yesterday in New Ross that Fianna Fail had no plans at this stage to introduce such a ban.
The Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, he explained, had responsibility for that area and would deal with it.
Mr Noonan told RTE's This Week programme he believed a line had to be drawn on political funding. Fine Gael had now drawn a line and, he said, it was time for "the decent people within Fianna Fail" to reassert themselves and say to their leaders it was time to clean up politics.
Meanwhile, a former financial director of Fianna Fail, Mr Sean Fleming TD, fully supported the banning of corporate donations and said he believed it would happen shortly, although he did not know precisely when.
About two years ago he had recommended such a ban to the Oireachtas Finance and Public Service Committee, Mr Fleming said.
Both Mr Noonan and Mr Derek McDowell of the Labour Party had been on that committee. And, within months, Mr Quinn had adopted the approach as Labour Party policy.
Mr Fleming did not accept that there would be any constitutional difficulties with such a ban, because limited companies had no special recognition under the Constitution.
Already the State was contributing about £3 million to the funding of political parties, and a corporate ban would merely result in a "top-up" of that money, he said.
He felt there was a public outcry about donations to political parties because of a perception that companies got something in return. The same concerns were not felt, he said, in relation to spending by political parties at election time. And he believed matters of funding and spending should be kept separate. A Labour Party Bill, aimed at banning corporate donations, received a Second Stage reading in the Dail last year.