DECLARATIONS BY the anti-Lisbon Treaty group Libertas about its spending in the recent referendum are "simply not truthful", Minister of State for European Affairs Dick Roche claimed yesterday.
He was speaking following the disclosure that the lobby group spent €910,000 in the campaign on advertising alone.
Libertas erected thousands of telegraph pole posters "which would have cost us €15 each", and ran a campaign bus "which would have cost €100,000 to fit-out and run for nine, or 10 weeks", Mr Roche said.
According to figures compiled by the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland (IAPI), which monitors advertising spend in the outdoor and print media, on the internet, on TV and in cinemas, the anti-Lisbon Treaty group spent €912,753 on advertisements in places such as newspapers, billboards and on buses.
Throughout the campaign, the organisation, responding to different media, gave differing figures about its budget, before finally settling on a €1.3 million figure, insisting that the money had come in small donations.
"It is clear that if you add up the figures that the budget must have been above €2 million," Mr Roche claimed. "It comes back to the question, where did they get their money from?"
Attempts to contact a spokesman for Libertas were unsuccessful.
The IAPI statistics include 21 per cent VAT, and they do not record any spend by Libertas in January, or February of this year.
In March Libertas spent €40,081 with the Sunday Independent, while in April it spent €134,700 on outdoor posters and €11,151 with the Irish Independentand Star on Sunday.
In May it spent €16,054 on internet advertising, €58,806 with the Irish Farmers' Journal, €191,034 on large billboards and €30,852 on buses, giving a total for May of €296,747.
In June it spent €16,940 on internet advertising, €247,327 on print and €165,805 on billboards.
Labour TD Joe Costello said the IAPI figures were "astonishing", showing as they did that Libertas spent more on its advertising campaign than all of the main parties, yet Libertas founder Declan Ganley had refused to show where his money came from.
"The whole purpose of our ethics code is to ensure that public representatives are not in the pockets of wealthy business people who may have an agenda which is not in the country's interest.
"It is unacceptable that a single wealthy individual whose business interests are largely based outside this country should be able to use his wealth to influence the outcome of a constitutional referendum and at the same time not have to disclose the source of the funding," said Mr Costello, Labour's Lisbon campaign director.
Mr Ganley has insisted the organisation will comply fully with the Standards in Public Office Commission's rules on funding, though in reality these impose a very low disclosure threshold.
Libertas has registered with the commission as "a third party" for the referendum campaign, meaning that it had to set up an election account once it received more than €126.97 in donations, services or any other form of help.
Like other such bodies, it will have to produce a statement from its bank not later than March 31st next, outlining the total sum that was received into the account - but not the identity of those who made donations.
Also, like other such bodies, it was not allowed to accept more than €6,348 from any one individual; donations from anyone living outside the Republic of Ireland who is not an Irish citizen; or any business which is not registered in Ireland.