Conclusion and Reflection: Time for an Electoral Commission for Ireland

† Some of the material used in this piece is derived from a joint submission in June 2015 (made together with Fiona Buckley, Theresa Reidy and Jane Suiter) to the Oireachtas Environment committee's consultation on the establishment of an Irish electoral commission. The usual disclaimer applies.

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Notes

† Some of the material used in this piece is derived from a joint submission in June 2015 (made together with Fiona Buckley, Theresa Reidy and Jane Suiter) to the Oireachtas Environment committee's consultation on the establishment of an Irish electoral commission. The usual disclaimer applies.

1. https://sites.google.com/site/electoralintegrityproject4/home.

2. www.constitution.ie.

3. In a wonderful irony the report is available for download on the website of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government: http://www.environ.ie/en/LocalGovernment/Voting/PublicationsDocuments/FileDownLoad,19472,en.pdf.

4. The figures reported here are from various reports available on the SIPO website: www.sipo.gov.ie.

5. That €5,078.95 threshold has some symbolic importance. This is shown for instance by the storm that emerged at the end of the 2011 presidential elections when one of the candidates was found to have had some involvement in a Fianna Fáil fundraiser several years earlier in which business people were invited to dinner with the then Taoiseach in return for making €5,000 donations – donations that were just below the disclosure threshold. See: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/businessman-says-gallagher-collected-5-000-cheque-1.885911. Of course, this practice was not just confined to this party (more generally, see Byrne, 2012).

6. http://www.sipo.gov.ie/en/Reports/Annual-Disclosures/Disclosure-by-Political-Parties/2014-Donation-Statements/Political-Parties-Annual-Donation-Statements-2014-Report.pdf.