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The Irish Independent this morning reports that the Green Party are spending just €5,000 on their Yes to Lisbon campaign.
This is simply pathetic.
Each of their parliamentary party members are being paid by the state, if they wanted a Yes to Lisbon they could easily achieve it.
Even if they donated the maximum €6,348.69 to the Green Party this year, they could easily donate the same amount again.
Simply, all they’d need to do is setup a separate Greens for Lisbon organisation with SIPO, donate €6,349.69 each and that would have a fund of at least €38,092.14.
They assembled their membership and got the required 66% support to enable the party to campaign for a Yes vote. It’s time for the part to put their money where their mouths are.
David Cochrane has worked in the digital, media and poltical arenas for over seven years, he runs the political discussion site Politics.ie, and is a part-time student and fulltime jobseeker.
This blog is about his interests, be it politics and current affairs, the media, looking for work, or anything else which comes to his mind.
Barra Roantree
September 10th, 2009 at 1:11 am
Common dave – thats utter tripe. We should deliberately try circumvent SIPO regulations, by technicalities if we can? Get out of it.
Pidge
September 10th, 2009 at 3:13 am
That’s only really possible if you don’t take spending/fundraising limits seriously, which obviously the Greens do. Setting up a separate organisation (which would be, in reality, the same) purely as a device to circumvent donation limits would go against the spirit of political funding legislation, and manipulating loopholes in such legislation would be anathema to one of the central purposes of the Greens.
David Cochrane
September 10th, 2009 at 9:36 am
But the point is then why only spend €5,000?
If it’s a case of the pot being empty from the Local & European elections earlier this year, could the Greens not borrow against donations next year, that’s if there’s not a General Election of course.
I do recall the Green Ministers offering to make substantial donations to the Green Party considering their rather massive salaries, and whilst the rules bar limits over a specific amount, what I suggested wouldn’t circumvent anything. Ireland for Europe, We Belong and others are all doing it too.
Pidge
September 10th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Dave, the party has already borrowed heavily from the last election. That much is made clear in the appeal for donation section of the site, and in the emails sent to members and supporters (emails which were made public).
The party was never going to have the material resources to impact the national campaign in terms of posters and ads. I know for a fact that we canvassed more in Dún Laoghaire and DSE than FF did last time out, but we just don’t have the financial strength at the moment to launch any sort of proper material campaign.
Senan
September 18th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
I agree, it’s pathetic. But at this stage I think the political landscape is fairly comical. It looks like the Greens have positioned themselves as the police of the government, not really there to rule, but instead to periodically influence (and chastise) in some way. Perhaps this is all they can aspire to, but I had high hopes when the union was formed that they would lead from the front. …And so, the 5 grand doesn’t really surprise me. I do think they (Eamon Ryan and Gormley) are talented, and I think it’s to a certain extent ‘wasted’ for them to be in power at at time such as now.