THE LIBERTAS Institute, the organisation run by the anti-Lisbon Treaty campaigner Declan Ganley, spent €5.65 million in 2009, the year its founder ran unsuccessfully for the European Parliament and campaigned in the second Lisbon Referendum.
The institute had an income that year of €3.2 million, according to accounts filed recently for 2009 and 2010.
Most of the income is believed to have come from donations although the accounts do not say this. Ireland’s largest political parties would not have war chests of comparable size.
In the directors’ reports accompanying the recently filed accounts, the first documents to be filed since December 2009, Mr Ganley and his brother, Seán, say Libertas intends “to lobby to influence public opinion into the future”.
There is a strong possibility an EU treaty referendum may be held next year arising from the ongoing crisis in the euro zone. Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has said it would, in effect, be a referendum on Ireland’s membership of the euro.
Mr Ganley has not said he would become involved in any such campaign and attempts to contact him yesterday met with no response.
The amounts in the accounts compare with the €1.5 million believed to have been spent by Fine Gael in the last general election, and the €500,000 Fianna Fáil spent in the second Lisbon referendum in 2009.
Last year Mr Ganley dissolved two companies, the Libertas Party and the Libertas Foundation, as he abandoned his effort to form a pan-European political party.
The Libertas Institute Ltd had a turnover of €1.4 million in 2008 when it campaigned for a No vote in the first Lisbon referendum.
The company’s outgoings in 2009 included €479,168 in staff costs, and “other operating expenses” of €5.2 million. It had an overall deficit of €2.46 million at the end of the year.
The company had third-party loans of €1.602 million and a personal guarantee from Mr Ganley for €1.4 million.
Mr Ganley himself was owed €82,474 at the end of 2009, down from €243,456 at the end of 2008. The company still owed him €82,474 at the end of 2010.
The businessman said he was withdrawing from politics after his unsuccessful attempt to be elected to the European Parliament in June 2009, though he became involved in the referendum campaign later that year.
The accounts show that in 2009 Libertas spent €283,814 on Brussels staff costs, €471,640 on travel and expenses, €664,837 on transport and travel, €1 million on advertising, €380,186 on publicity, €1.13 million on legal and professional fees, and €951,427 on consultancy fees.
It spent €15,349 on “election/referendum posters” and €487,098 on “other election/referendum material”.
The level of activity through the accounts was much reduced in 2010.
The Libertas Institute is not a political party and is subject to different rules from political parties in relation to fundraising and transparency.