AFTER 4 1/2 years of promises, heartsearchings and disputes the major political parties have failed to deliver on undertakings to bring the funding of Irish politics into line with European standards.
Months of dithering and delay have seen Brendan Howlin's Electoral Bill run into the sand. And, with a general election likely to be called within the next few weeks, there is general agreement that the Bill has little chance of being passed.
It's been a long, convoluted road since the Greencore/Irish Sugar, Telecom, beef industry and other "golden circle" controversies convulsed Irish politics in the early 1990s. And when Dick Spring entered government with Albert Reynolds in 1992, part of the price involved a commitment to an Ethics in Public Office Act and an Electoral Act. Two years later, the government fell with the promised legislation still on the stocks.
The first Bill was designed to regulate the ethical behaviour of politicians and ministers; to provide a register of their financial and commercial interests and to record gifts in excess of £500 in value. After a great deal of political resistance, a filleted version was finally pushed through the Dail by Eithne Fitzgerald last year.
Brendan Howlin inherited a partially completed Electoral Bill from Michael Smith. It was designed to ensure the disclosure of donations exceeding £4,000 to political parties, or of £500 to individual politicians. "To make up the shortfall in corporate funding, elected TDs and their parties were to receive £1 per vote, at an annual cost to the State of £2.1 million. The Bill also proposed to impose limits on spending at election time by parties and by candidates and to establish a statutory commission to revise Dail and European Parliament constituencies.
THE Labour Party Minister also inherited the McKenna Supreme Court judgment which said that all parties and candidates in an election and referendum must be treated equally. On that basis, sections of the Bill were found to be unconstitutional and had to be redrafted.
But the surge in public indignation over political/commercial linkages had passed. State funding for political parties had become an unpopular issue. And with the Labour Party under serious pressure in the opinion polls, Mr Howlin sat on his hands. For months on end, there, were reports that something was being done, but nothing happened.
And then news of Ben Dunne's payments to Michael Lowry, to Fine Gael and the Labour Party and to a "former Fianna Fail Minister" broke. The atmosphere was transformed. But, according to reports, Mr Howl in still had to be pressurised into bringing the amended Bill to Cabinet because of its potential unpopularity in an election campaign.
The changes required by the McKenna judgment were extensive. There were 230 amendments, of which about 150 were submitted by the Government and the remainder by Fianna Fail. The Progressive Democrats, opposed in principle to the Bill, submitted none.
The redrawn Bill would cost £2.5 million and involved two mechanisms: to treat all aspirants equally, any candidate who received at least one quarter of a quota could claim election expenses up to £5,000; the second involved paying £1 million to political parties with more than 2 per cent of the national vote on a prorata basis.
Over the past month, the Dail Committee of Finance and General Affairs spent six long days debating the amendments and has made considerable progress. But the Finance Bill took precedence there this week band will be completed next week.
FIANNA Fail denies, with considerable justification, that it is engaged in a filibuster on the Electoral Bill. And while it objects to much of the detail, it remains committed to the principle of the legislation. But Michael McDowell is "radically" opposed to the Bill and makes no secret of his determination to stop it becoming law.
Mr McDowell objects to the Bill on the grounds that the State should not be involved in the funding of political parties. In addition, "the whole enterprise of trying to control spending at election time is undesirable", he says, because it would penalise the honest politician who obeyed the law while favouring the dishonest politician. And, last week, he told the Institute of Directors that his party would scrap the legislation if it was returned to government.
The Progressive Democrats party is heavily dependent on corporate funding. Of all the political parties, it stands to lose most from a state funded system, linked to the disclosure of private donations. Some of its benefactors would not wish Fianna Fail and Fine Gael to compare the relevant levels of donation. The party does not object to State funding through the "leaders allowances" which cost £1.8 million. Policy, in this instance, appears to flow from pragmatism rather than principle.
Valid concerns about the operation of the Electoral Bill have been expressed by all parties. The proposals to monitor and to control election spending are so complex that it might not be possible to implement them in the coming general election, even if the Bill was passed.
Last week, a Government source suggested that this section of the Bill might be brought into effect, later in the year, by ministerial order. But the difficulties attendant on piece meal implementation are so great that the Government appears to have given up on the option.
There is another good reason why the established parties are not rushing their fences. An election subsidy of £5,000 would encourage an awful blot of Green and Independent candidates to go before the electorate in the belief they would secure at least one quarter of a quota. And, in the present atmosphere of uncertainty and "sleaze" they might become the focus of a sizeable protest vote. They could even determine the composition of the next government.
Legislation which falls on the dissolution of the Dail can be reactivated at the same level of progress by any incoming government. So, unless Mr McDowell can secure a commitment from Fianna Fail to ditch the Bill - or Mr Howlin goes back into procrastination mode - this long awaited reform should be in place by 1998.
