FF warned ban vital if party to continue in Government

CORPORATE DONATIONS:GREEN PARTY delegates have warned that if Fianna Fáil does not accept legislation to ban corporate donations, the junior partner in the Coalition must make it clear it will not stay in Government.

As the party unanimously endorsed a motion at its annual convention to introduce legislation by January next year to ban such donations, members said they should not wait until then but should introduce it with “absolute urgency”, because they had already compromised on a number of “core principles”, and on some issues “there is no compromise”.

David Geary of Dublin Central and North West said “if the Government is serious there is no need to waste any more time. Let us ban corporate donations well before the next election.” He added: “If Fianna Fáil don’t want to do this then let us make it clear to them that we do not want to be in Government with them.”

Delegate Roderic O’Gorman said “there is absolutely no point in us being in Government solely to prop up Fianna Fáil”. He said they were working not with “political allies but with dyed-in-the-wool political enemies in Fianna Fáil”. He warned that “setting deadlines and insisting that they’re met is the only way Fianna Fáil is going to take us seriously”.

Gary Fitzgerald of Dublin Central and North West questioned why the issue was even part of negotiations on the renewed Programme for Government since they already had a deal on it.

“At last year’s Green Party conference we all loudly cheered when our party leader announced that he had reached an agreement with Fianna Fáil that corporate donations would be banned.

“And then in the Programme for Government for reasons I don’t fully understand we re-opened the negotiations on corporate donations.” He said “if we had the agreement why did we re-open the negotiations? If we had that agreement why wasn’t the legislation drafted as a matter of urgency?”

He added: “We shouldn’t be waiting until January of next year to have that in place . . . We should do it immediately.”

Mr Fitzgerald criticised Fine Gael and said the first reform by “the great reformer of Irish politics, Enda Kenny himself”, when he became leader was to reform the decision of his predecessor Michael Noonan “to prohibit Fine Gael from taking corporate donations. Enda Kenny reformed that backwards to allow Fine Gael to accept those donations.”

Delegate Kevin Donnelly said “Fianna Fáil will do anything to prevent this” banning of corporate donations. “Their opposition has been obvious during negotiations on the Programme for Government.” He added: “This is one area where, for the good of the future of this country, we cannot back down. People will say politics is about compromise” but “on some issues there is no compromise”.

He said: “There is no valid reason why this legislation should not be introduced by January 2011. There is no need for compromise . . . we have already compromised on a number of our core principles.”

Cork South Central delegate Dominic Donnelly said “corporate donation is a nice word for corruption . . . Any party that accepts a corporate donation is inherently, de facto corrupt.”

Banning corporate donations was “absolutely critical” as a legacy of the Greens in Government. “We have to have this if we are going to be able to go out and hold our heads up and say . . . We did this in Government. This is why you should be voting for us in the future.”