Gormley hopes for ban on corporate donations

PARTY FUNDING:GREEN PARTY leader John Gormley has said he is not aware that coalition partner Fianna Fáil has any difficulty with proposed legislation banning corporate donations to political parties.

Mr Gormley insisted during his party’s think-in in Leighlinbridge, Co Carlow, that corporate donations would be banned during the lifetime of the Government. The measure was included in the revised Programme for Government at the insistence of the Greens.

“There are obviously going to be tensions from time to time. You even get tensions within political parties themselves, as you saw with Fine Gael, but I think that you work through these issues . . . we try as best we can to deal with any difficult issues and I’m confident that we can continue to do that,” Mr Gormley said.

“I’m not aware of any difficulties concerning corporate donations, but I hope that that will go through. I think it would be a welcome development, that at long last we can break definitively the link between big business and politics.”

Taoiseach Brian Cowen was less definitive about the proposal in his controversial radio interview on Tuesday morning. Pressed on whether or not the legislation would be introduced, Mr Cowen said it was under consideration.

Mr Gormley highlighted the promised Dublin mayoral election as another of his party’s legislative priorities in the coming Dáil term. He also claimed a directly elected mayor for Dublin would save money in the long term.

“The mayoralty will actually save us money . . . if we want to compete on the international stage we have to compete with cities across the world, across Europe particularly, where you have a directly elected mayor,” he said. Mr Gormley promised “a mayor with real power, but a mayor that is not going to cost us money but save us money”.

Dublin Mid-West TD Paul Gogarty insisted there was no chance of third-level education fees being introduced between now and 2012.

“For some reason there was a ‘silly season’ story out there that somehow we were reviewing our position. Minister [for Education] and Tánaiste Coughlan has already said that during the lifetime of this Government we will not be revisiting the issue of third-level fees,” Mr Gogarty said.

“That’s the position of the Green Party, it’s in the programme for government . . . That said, there is a need, longer term, to look at how higher education, indeed the entire education system needs to be funded . . . but there are no fees going to be introduced between now and 2012 – full stop.”

The party’s finance spokesman Senator Dan Boyle said the Greens wanted the upcoming budget to be as “socially balanced” as possible.

He said refundable tax credits and other measures to integrate the tax and social welfare systems should be implemented “to assist the working poor in particular”.

Speaking at the conclusion of the think-in, Mr Boyle said: “Our discussions have been more about themes than individual measures at this stage.” He said the Greens’ priorities would be outlined in more detail next week.