The High Court yesterday dismissed a petition by disability campaigner Ms Kathy Sinnott aimed at overturning the May 2002 general election result in Cork South Central.
Mr Justice Kelly ruled that Ms Sinnott had failed to establish her claim that the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, had spent beyond his statutory limit of €38,092 during the election campaign. The judge will give his reasons for that decision in a written judgment later when he will also address the issue of costs of the eight-day hearing, estimated at up to €500,000.
Within two hours of the judgment, Mr John Rogers SC, for Labour Party councillor, Mr Nicky Kelly, told the judge Mr Kelly wished to withdraw his petition challenging the result of the general election in the Wicklow constituency. That petition was due to be heard today.
Mr Kelly had brought the petition on the basis of an alleged overspend by Fianna Fáil TD Mr Joe Jacob, while Mr Jacob argued Mr Kelly himself had not complied with the Electoral Acts. Mr Kelly's application for leave to withdraw his petition will be heard by the High Court on December 10th.
Earlier, in his decision on the Sinnott case, Mr Justice Kelly said that, because he had concluded Ms Sinnott had not established an overspend by Mr Martin, it was not necessary to proceed to the next stage of the petition which would have addressed the issue of whether any overspend had a material effect on the outcome of the election.
Mr Martin topped the poll in the five-seater Cork South Central constituency in the May 17th 2002 general election, with a surplus of 5,500 votes. The other seats went to Fianna Fáil's Mr Batt O'Keeffe and Mr John Dennehy, Mr Simon Coveney of Fine Gael and Mr Dan Boyle of the Green Party. Ms Sinnott lost the battle for the last seat, by a margin of six votes, to Mr Dennehy.
The 2002 election was the first general election to be governed by the Electoral Acts 1997-2002 which were designed to regulate expenditure and set down spending limits for candidates. The election was further affected by a High Court decision of May 16th 2002, the eve of the poll.
In that case, the High Court upheld a claim by Dublin Mid-West Fianna Fáil candidate Mr Des Kelly that outgoing TDs, Senators and MEPs must include in their election spending statements any expenses incurred from public funds.
Following the publication by the Standards in Public Office Commission of the spending returns of candidates in the 2002 election in June last, a petition challenging the Cork South Central result was brought in the names of Ms Sinnott and Mr Mark Menihane, an elector in Cork South Central.
In alleging an overspend by Mr Martin, Ms Sinnott claimed he failed to include in his election spending returns the costs incurred by the constituency unit office in the Department of Health, and nor had he included the costs of his special advisers.
Mr Martin had claimed neither the constituency unit nor his special advisers were engaged in electoral work and therefore they did not require to be included in his spending statement.
Ms Sinnott also claimed that the Minister, because he had undertaken in writing before the election to assign half (€19,046) of his total spending limit to Fianna Fáil and had then gone on to personally spend €21,430, those combined sums gave him a total spend of €40,476, over the permitted limit by €2,384.
Mr Martin argued the €19,046 figure had been agreed in the context of an arrangement whereby he could have access to some €6,400 of the amount assigned to Fianna Fáil. In the event, he claimed the party had spent some €5,608 of the assigned amount on his campaign and this, with his personal spend of €21,430, brought him to some €27,038, well under the limit of €38,092.
Meanwhile, Mr Nicky Kelly's application for leave to withdraw his petition will be heard on December 10th. Mr Justice Kelly directed that adverts announcing Mr Kelly's intention should be placed in tomorrow's editions of The Irish Times and Irish Independent. Any person who wished to take over the petition would have five days to do so from then.
