The paper bag and the four green fields

If Tom Gilmartin's memory of his phone conversations with Padraig Flynn last autumn is correct, the Commissioner was suggesting it would be OK if he took money from Mr Gilmartin merely to fund his own election campaign. This seems, broadly, to be Ray Burke's position too.

From his Dail statement on the allegation that he took money from JMSE and/or Bovale Developments, it seems he will maintain that whatever money he was given was a legitimate political contribution. As the brown paper bag takes its place alongside the cupla focal and the four green fields in the iconography of Fianna Fail, we will see more and more senior figures clinging to this vital distinction. Big bribe bad. Big campaign contribution good.

It is a distinction without a difference. Politicians should not accept money from contributors under any circumstances. Who says? Fianna Fail - and on the record. Not nice new, ethical, idealistic Fianna Fail, but the bad old party. It was not said with hindsight about the late 1980s and early 1990s, the era of spontaneous generosity currently under examination, but right in the midst of that unfortunate epoch.

In September 1992 the then Fianna Fail general secretary, Mr Pat Farrell, gave sworn evidence to the beef tribunal setting out the party's fund-raising policies and practices. In the runup to an election, Mr Farrell told the tribunal, the party would organise a special fund-raising appeal. "All letters inviting contributions are in standard format and are mailed directly by a full-time paid official at headquarters and donations are received directly by him at headquarters and dealt with by him and duly receipted."

He continued: "All donations are sought in the strictest confidence and without conditions . . . All records are maintained strictly under the control of the full-time official. No other party officials, honorary officers, party members or politicians have access to these records nor has any such access ever been sought."

This last sentence is particularly important, and its significance was underlined by Pat Farrell himself. "The system," he stressed, "fully respects the confidentiality of donations and ensures separation and supervision (sic) of these fund-raising activities from politicians and the political process . . . An important reason for maintaining the confidentiality of contributions is not to keep the existence or amount of such contributions confidential from the public, but rather to ensure that subsequent decisions by politicians which might involve or concern contributors cannot be ascribed to political contributions.

"Specifically, our politicians do not know who contributes to the party or how much. The fact is that far from tainting the political process, the maintenance of confidentiality plays a vital role in ensuring that the making of political contributions cannot result or be portrayed as resulting in political favouritism."

These were not off-the-cuff remarks. As the formal language suggests, they were carefully drafted. This was a sworn public inquiry established by a unanimous vote of both houses of the Oireachtas. Pat Farrell was not speaking on his own behalf but as the authorised representative of the largest political party in the Oireachtas. This, for the inquiry, for the political system and for the public, was the definitive statement on Fianna Fail's attitude to fund-raising. It was the truth and nothing but.

And it probably represented, by proxy, the evidence of Bertie Ahern. Earlier this week, Mr Ahern told RTE Radio's News at One: "I formally took over as treasurer [of Fianna Fail] on January 28th, 1993. I was involved in the run-in to that for a few months." That few months surely goes back as far as mid-September 1992 when Pat Farrell gave his evidence to the beef tribunal.

At that point, presumably, Mr Ahern was "involved" in the party's fund-raising policies. There is certainly nothing to indicate he would have demurred in any way from the party's sworn statement of what those policies were.

So Fianna Fail had clear rules for handling money. Fund-raising is a matter for a party official at headquarters in Mount Street only. It is entirely separate from the political process. No politician can have access to records of donations, never mind the donations themselves. Ministers, TDs, MEPs, senators and EU commissioners must remain entirely ignorant of who is, or is not, stumping up for the posters, the advertisements, the leaflets, the campaign buses . . .

They are, and must remain, in a state of utter innocence: "Our politicians do not know who contributes to the party or how much". And this is, according to the party itself, "vital" to democracy. Were it otherwise, the public might assume contributors were fat cats and bigwigs buying favours rather than idealistic philanthropists anxious to ensure their beloved Ireland had the best that Mr Farrell had inadvertently omitted any qualifications or exceptions to the party's fund-raising practices and principles, they would surely have gone to the tribunal and said so.

There are only two possibilities and each raises serious questions. One is the most senior party official was misled into giving, in good faith, inaccurate evidence to the beef tribunal and the rules he outlined did not apply. If so, who misled him? Who allowed a false impression of the party's ethical standards to remain on the record as sworn evidence before a public inquiry? If Fianna Fail's rules were not what Pat Farrell said they were, the least that might be expected is that the incoming party treasurer, Mr Ahern, would have put the record straight.

The other possibility, of course, is that Pat Farrell's understanding of the ethical principles involved in Fianna Fail fund-raising was right. If this is so, then why was no disciplinary action taken against those who flouted those principles? Ray Burke has admitted he accepted £30,000 as a direct contribution from JMSE. Padraig Flynn has yet to deny he took £50,000 from Tom Gilmartin.

Now Fianna Fail is not known for its reluctance to expel members deemed to have broken its rules. Des O'Malley and Mary Harney, honest politicians, were forced out merely because they disagreed with the leader's interpretation of Northern policy.

The fact no action has been taken against Ray Burke or Padraig Flynn suggests Fianna Fail can't manage to live up even to the ethical standards it enunciated under the leadership of the rightly despised Charles Haughey. Who's going to believe that the party can live up to its new ethical principles when even the old ones could be flouted so?