Fine Gael financing questions need reply

Fine Gael, like Fianna Fail, has been mired in the muddy mix of politics and money. It too has been crucially compromised. The most serious questions remain Fine Gael's finances in government from late 1994 to 1997. No party has been so spectacularly enriched in such a short period - when the most spectacular favours were granted. What needs to be answered is whether there was any connection between the spectacular enrichment and the spectacular favours.

John Bruton was right to complain (again) about a mistake I made here last week. Contrary to what I wrote, he did respond to a question I asked him about New Century Network. He set it up in 1999 for business people who, for £4,000 a year, could get for themselves an input into the formulating of Fine Gael policy affecting business. I had asked how could it be, as he had insisted, that policy formulation and fundraising were entirely separate activities with no "crossover" between the two, when he had set up an organisation that institutionalised such a crossover.

His reply, which I regret I overlooked last week, was: "It has been a normal feature of party fundraising, in almost all Western democracies, for donors to have the opportunity, as in the case of New Century Network, of meeting socially with politicians to discuss policy concerns they have. This is entirely different from accepting donations that are contingent on policy commitment. Fine Gael accepted no such donation."

In a letter to The Irish Times he added: "Vincent Browne and I are not going to agree about the issue whether there should be private funding of political parties." He might be right about that, but it is not the issue and he evaded my question. The issue is whether what he was seeking to do via New Century Network was - let's find a nice word for it - improper. And, given what he was proposing to do in return for party funding in 1999, it is legitimate to ask: "did he do anything while in government?"

Let us look again at his own declared standards on fundraising. This was offered to the McCracken tribunal when he was under a little pressure, explaining apparent discrepancies between his evidence there and what he had told the beef tribunal six years previously. He told the McCracken tribunal on April 28th, 1997: "The work that the party might be doing in the Dail, raising particular matters in opposition, would be done . . . by individual spokespeople who would not be aware of whether individuals had made contributions or not and, therefore, would not be influenced in what they would be doing in opposition in that matter."

If that was the moral standard he set for Fine Gael, how could he arrange for "input into developing Fine Gael policy affecting business" and meetings "with Fine Gael policy-makers to discuss business issues" in return for annual donations of £4,000?

The arrangement he told the tribunal he found unacceptable, he formally put in place a year later. And, in the light of that, are we to accept at face value that Fine Gael in government did no favours in return for donations, when a few years out of government it did the biggest favour it could offer for donations?

In his heated response to my original column on Fine Gael finances (March 14th) he claimed he told the Fine Gael ministers in December 1993 to do nothing they would not wish to see revealed on the front page of The Irish Times. Well, he took care to ensure that the cosy arrangement he made for the £4,000a-year club did not get on any page of The Irish Times. He did this by pitching the threshold of annual contributions to New Century Network at £4,000 - the maximum donation anyone could make to a political party without having to disclose it.

Now back to the central point about Fine Gael's finances: how come Fine Gael managed to rake in money on getting back into government in 1995 when it had such difficulty in getting donations in opposition? It took in £780,000 in 1994 and £1.4 million in its first year back into office in 1995. In the year it last held office it took in nearly £2 million. Are we to believe this had all to do with the buoyant economy, inflation and Fine Gael's rising stock, as John Bruton claimed in his original response?

Denis O'Brien, in a comment on the Telenor affair, said Telenor told him it wanted to make a donation to Fine Gael to establish "political connections" in Ireland. The suggestion was that the way business people could make "political connections" while Fine Gael was in office was by making a fairly hefty donation. Now Telenor could have been wrong, but there was no suggestion that Denis O'Brien told them this was not how to go about it. Denis O'Brien might have been wrong in believing this was the way to do business in the Fine Gael era. But Denis O'Brien knows a thing or two about how the system works and surely he would have told Telenor if it was on the wrong track.

The only way we can have answers to the questions hovering over Fine Gael is through an amendment to the terms of reference of the Moriarty tribunal.

vbrowne@irish-times.ie