Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe has insisted he breached no spending limits by accepting an offer from a friend to erect posters for him in his constituency during the 2016 election campaign.
Mr Donohoe received the equivalent of €1,240 in payments-in-kind when Michael Stone of Designer Group provided a van and six workers to put up posters in the Minister’s Dublin Central constituency at the time.
While the overall amount exceeded the €1,000 allowable for an individual donation to a political candidate, a spokeswoman for Mr Donohoe said there were two donations in this instance and that each was below the strict limits set out in the Electoral Acts.
The spokeswoman said that €917 was the relevant sum, as the amount paid up to polling day, and this was below the limit. The use of the van was a separate donation from Designer Group, she added, and the €140 value of this was below the €200 limit permitted for donations from companies. She added that the donations were made to the Fine Gael branch in Dublin Central and not to Mr Donohoe. The limit on a donation from a person to a party is €2,500.
Mr Donohoe has admitted that he failed to register the value of the payments with the Standard in Public Offices Commission (Sipo).
Speaking after he chaired a Eurogroup meeting in Brussels on Monday night, Mr Donohoe said he was confident that donation limits were not exceeded and that no others had gone undeclared.
“Even with the revisions in my election expenses that were made by my election agent yesterday, we are inside the thresholds for donations to a political party because they were received by my constituency organisation at election time and not me,” he said. “We have reviewed all of the different expenses from other elections and I believe they are accurate.”
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Sipo process
The Minister accepted at the weekend that he had failed to declare the payment in his election expenses. It came after a complaint was lodged with Sipo last week. Six workers spent four nights putting up posters throughout Dublin Central ahead of the 2016 election. The constituency had been reduced from four seats to three and Mr Donohoe was under considerable pressure at the time to retain his Dáil seat.
The Minister has said he would recuse himself from all policy areas related to ethics and electoral legislation, part of his recently assumed brief, for the period of the Sipo process.
Mr Stone was appointed as chairman of a board seeking to revive Dublin’s North East Inner City in 2017, after being recommended by Mr Donohoe for the unpaid, voluntary role. He was also appointed as a board member of the Land Development Agency by former minister for housing Eoghan Murphy in 2019. He has waived his €15,759 fee and has not claimed expenses.
Senior figures from Fine Gael’s Coalition partners rallied around Mr Donohoe on Monday. Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said the Minister had given a thorough explanation, while Green Party deputy leader Catherine Martin said he had expressed “immense regret” and made a detailed statement.
Minister for Finance Michael McGrath said there was “no question over Mr Donohoe’s position in Cabinet or as president of the Eurogroup”.
Opposition parties have called on Mr Donohoe to make a detailed statement to the Dáil on what they portrayed as a convoluted and incomplete explanation.
Sinn Féin TD Louise O’Reilly said he had not fully explained all the circumstances behind his failure to declare his expenses, not only in 2016 but as recently as November when queries were submitted to him by a journalist. “To me, it’s baffling to think that a donation would be made in the teeth of an election campaign, providing campaign work that somehow is not considered an election expense,” she said.
Ged Nash of Labour also called for Mr Donohoe to give a complete account to the Dáil.
