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Democracy at the right price? (from #gp10)
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One headline over the weekend covered the Green’s latest promise to ban corporate donations, preventing “builders and bankers” (presumably also horticulturalists and bodhran makers?) from donating to political parties.
This is all well and good and goes down well in a populist sense, so that politicians “cannot be bought” and the system remains “free from influence” and all sorts of other worthy clichés.
However I have yet to see their proposals for alternative funding? Elections cost money to run, fact. Quite considerable amounts of money in fact. Between posters, leaflets, media advertising it can run from a couple thousand up to (an outer extreme) a hundred thousand depending on the election and constituency. That’s not even counting things as basic as petrol, telephone, stationary, postage, probably significant time out of work for the candidate.
Money does not guarantee a result but if definitely construes an electoral advantage. Paid helpers can free the core team up from the vanilla tasks. People can be paid to put up posters or deliver leaflets for example, leaving the volunteers free to canvass. Without money these are significant logistical challenges. The bills from the standard costs can be paid without qualm and topped up as necessary. Another example going up the scale, a dedicated office can be operated, with maybe hired staff, again a great advantage but at significant cost.
In short campaigns cost money, and the more money one has the bigger a campaign one can run. This is wrong as it is wrong for democracy to be a function of the highest bidder. However how does the playing field become levelled? Sensibly the local elections were monitored for the first time last year, with a ninety day window on spending limits introduced. This rule needs to be applied to generals too (currently only the last three weeks count) and the limits need to be revised.
But where should the money come from? Are the greens suggesting it should come from candidates own pockets and if so it is another form of highest bidder operation as only some will be in a position to do this. Hardly a democracy.
One possible solution is to fund parties from the tax payer with an amount proportionate to their electoral results. However this system would be self-perpetuating as it would pose a catch 22 for new entrants.
On a side note, I understand that Labour currently are in reasonable financial health, courtesy in the main of the trade unions where an ongoing transfer of funds continues to flow month in, month out. Will that also be banned under this proposed new regime, and if not, why not?
The ultimate conclusion of a blanket ban on donations could be a situation where only the already wealthy can run for office – hardly in keeping with a democratic and egalitarian ethos. I have yet to hear a practical and fair alternative to this?
I’m fairly certain that banning corporate donations means just that – banning only corporate donations but allowing individual donations. It based on the idea that a company is a legal creation and so doesn’t/shouldn’t have a political opinion like humans do. Donating money should be a financial expression of a politically held belief, but with corporate donations it is just a means of companies gaining undue influence.
‘corporate’ essentially means non-humans, so yes I think Unions are covered. No legislation published yet so we don’t know!
The Greens don’t accept corporate donations and run their campaigns based on private donations/candidates own money. As an active member of the Greens I think the biggest impact it has is that it stops people from running. If you have to put forward your own time AND your own money, or spend hours energy fundraising, then that is quite a disincentive.
@Andrew,
That’s an interesting perspective. I think we are on the same page?
I think any system that discourages / debilitates interested people from seeking public office is a flawed one.
The Green Party policy to ban corporate donations isn’t about limiting the size or value of donations to a particular candidate, rather it’s about limiting the lobbying nature of those donations.
It’s important to distinguish between the two arguments.
The following two examples are clearly different:
Candidate A receives donations of €30,000 from 300 individuals/companies.
Candidate B receives donations of €30,000 from 10 individuals/companies.
Having said that, the Green Party want to limit both corporate donations and campaign expenditure.
In @Conor’s example Candidate B still enjoys advantage as Candidate A has presumably had to expend a lot more time / energy / resources to fundraising efforts to achieve the same return from a far wider pool.
Sensible spending limits are probably the way to go. Currently the GE limit is approx 25k but only applied in the last three weeks. If the locals are anything to go by an extended (90 days) GE limit would be in region of €60k (as they were €15k in locals, area about 25% that of a Dáil constituency). This is a start but still a very high bar to reach on limited resources.
There may be complimentary non-monetary measures to help manage this. How about a limit of 1,000 posters per GE candidate and 250 per LE candidate for example? This should not be any more difficult to police than any other existing limits – it’d be fairly obvious, not least to rival candidates, if someone has gone out and done an excess poster bliztkrieg.
It’s important to state also that a blanket ban on corporate donations without consideration to its possible effects would be a grave mistake.
Businesses who engage in donations to politicans obviously want something. They have an agenda.
We must listen to them and see are there other ways that the Government can help them before just blatantly banning corporate donations.
For example, in the past it was not unknown for politicians to receive bribes on planning matters. We had tribunals exploring these payments. The tribunals (that cost millions of euro) could explain HOW these bribes happened, however, they never explained WHY these bribes happened.
Developers in the 1970s through to 1990s saw the need for housing and other infrastructure to be built, but planners didn’t. Bribes were the effect of an incapable planning system. Bribes were needed to allow the free market do what it does. The planners and politicans of the day weren’t in tune with the needs of capital and enterprise.
So, before we ban corporate donations, we need to discuss firstly why we have businesses willing to make donations, and if we make it illegal, what will those businesses do then and what effect will it have on us?
“However I have yet to see their proposals for alternative funding?”
The commitment in the 2009 Renewed Programme for Government spells out the replacement:
“We will put in place the legal mechanisms to restrict direct political donations to political parties or candidates to individual Irish citizens and residents only and facilitate a system where donations from private bodies, including businesses and corporations, can be made to a political fund which will be distributed to political parties in accordance with their electoral performance in the previous Dáil election.”
I doubt that Union donations will be banned as these are effectively individual donations from union members which are aggregated through the union – members can opt out.
“Developers in the 1970s through to 1990s saw the need for housing and other infrastructure to be built, but planners didn’t. Bribes were the effect of an incapable planning system. Bribes were needed to allow the free market do what it does. The planners and politicans of the day weren’t in tune with the needs of capital and enterprise.”
A rather bizarre summary of the planning scandals of the 1980s and 1990s, if you don’t mind me saying so. The people paying the bribes were not motivated by some civic-minded conviction that housing was needed, they were motivated by a profit-minded conviction that if housing was needed it should be built on their land. Providing the infrastructure to service this development was then left to the public authorities to figure out.
@Ryano
It’s a question nobody ever tried to answer. Why did developers bribe politicians? Because there was money to be made. Why was there money to be made? Because the city was seriously underdeveloped and there was potential there to make alot of money.
The planners failed to see this deficit, and so developers took the course of action they did.
And to this day we have been left with a developer led planning system, not to mention the terrible rushed planning decisions that have left the city in a mess (and pretty much the entire country).
If the planners were on the ball, they would have worked with the developers, rather than chasing their coat tails.
I think the answer to the question of what are they supposed to do with so much less money at election time is “suck it up and spend less on the campaign”.
With my KildareStreet hat on I’m actually less concerned with the limits and more concerned with lowering the declaration thresholds to about €100, while getting the donations published in non-geological time. Any assistance from readers about how we get the Transparency aspect of this and a great many other electoral/constitutional discussions at the front of the discussions would be warmly welcomed.
@John,
That’s fine if it applies to all candidates equally. But that is not the proposal. Do you think it is a healthy democracy where the wealthiest individual ipso facto has the best chance of winning the election?
I would have to agree with the Green Party on this one. I am uncomfortable with corporate entities funding political campaigns and parties.
However, I am equally uncomfortable with the idea that there should be a limit of individual donations. Say for example, I was lucky enoough to win €329 million on the Euromillions. Personally, I feel I should be allowed to donate €1 million to the party of my choice so long as it above board and transparent.
The argument that I would expect a favour in return is bogus. If it above board and open to scrutiny it negate that argument in my opinion.
The trouble with any discussion in this country about how politics should be financed is that it’s framed solely in negative terms. The underlying twin presumption being that politicians, especially those in larger parties, are all corrupt and will take cash for favours for their own personal use unless they are legally prevented from doing so and that any money coming from corporate or business interests is by definition dirty and tainted and donated with corrupt intentions. The other argument that’s regularly advanced is the ‘level playing field’ one, usually from smaller parties of left leaning persuasion or whose social and economic policies are unlikely to attract the support of the business community in the first place and who naturally want to disadvantage those parties who do.
When you start teasing it out the bigger question emerges: How should a democratic society ensure that its politics are financed to promote the maximum engagement by civic society, including business and other organizations with a public policy agenda (unions, NGOs) as well as the individual citizen, in elections and political activity and campaigns and how best can we regulate it to avoid corruption?
Banning ‘corporate donations’ may play well with an angry public who are disillusioned with politicians and the establishment parties but what effect would impoverishing political parties or worse, making them dependant on State financing only, have on healthy democratic engagement on the issues that affect our society? If you ban corporate or business donations then it’s wrong to pick out commercial and private company finance only for this treatment – it has to apply right across the board to include all other civic organizations including unions, NGOs, interest groups and any assistance provided by them or their members in cash or in kind in support of any political campaigns. Before long you may arrive at a point where the democratic lifeblood is sucked out of political campaigns entirely.
If there is sufficient transparency in the system then it really shouldn’t matter who’s donating what to whom. John Handelaar’s point about financial donations being published ‘in non-geological time’ is a good one since part of the problem with our current system is that we can’t find out who provided financial support to individual politicians or parties until well after the electoral contest or campaign is over. So you may find out too late that you gave support to an individual or party whose campaign was assisted or financed by organisations or commercial interests of which you do not approve.
Given that we’re supposed to be the ‘smart economy’ and ‘innovation society’ why can’t we design a system whereby all donations to politicians and parties and all finance raised through golf outing fundraisers or the like are logged and posted on a website with public access as soon as they are received?
I think the commitment in the current Programme for Government is flawed and a lot more public debate and discussion of the kind that is taking place here is needed before that proposal is advanced any further. It has the air of a sledgehammer to kill a flea about it as well as pandering to the interests of a party that doesn’t attract much in the way of financial support from the corporate world anyway and therefore has nothing to lose by banning it. I seem to remember that Fine Gael at one stage in the not too recent past placed a ban on corporate donations, but lifted it shortly after a change in the leadership and when they realized that cutting off that source of finance might leave them consigned to the political wilderness for all time to come.
@Veronica,
Good points.
The knee-jerk, ‘suck it up’ reaction is unhelpful. As you say, there is an implicit assumption all politicians are corrupt etc. It fails to tackle the question that should be of interest in any democracy, how should any candidate/campaign aquire the funding necessary to succeed?
If we do not answer that question then we risk creating an even more elitist and financially skewed system than we have at the moment.
Maybe if more of the commentators stood for office themselves we could have more constructive and realistic debates on these topics.
James,
Agreed, except for your last point. I suddenly had an horrific vision of scores of would-be George Lees drawn from our political and economic commentariat offering their talents to run the country!
Seriously though, you’ve framed the real question correctly – how should any candidate/campaign acquire the funding necessary to succeed (though I would have said ‘compete’rather than ‘succeed’)in the democratic arena. If that was the starting point for a public debate we might end up with a reasonable, fair and transparent system. The Greens, and others who argue for the outright ban solution, have got it wrong because they’re coming at it from a wrong premise to start with.
@James and @Veronica – I’m afraid I don’t quite accept your point. No one is arguing for an outright ban on donations; the Greens still take in money each year from individual donations and fundraisers. They run campaigns, albeit on a small scale.
The money being taken in by larger parties via corporate donations is not being used to run civic engagement campaigns by these parties. It is being used to conduct opinion polls, hire spin doctors and rent hundreds of billboards will airbrushed politicians and inane slogans. I don’t think it can be defended as spending essential to the democratic process.
In terms of attracting candidates, part of the problem is corporate donations. If you are an independent candidate, or a candidate of a smaller party, and have to go up against FF/FG/Lab’s massive campaigners then you have less of an incentive to run. If you take the massive campaign spending out of the system you level it and allow people on a smaller budget to enter politics. Far from consigning it to ‘George Lee/Bill Cullen’ types you will actually get a wider spread of people being involved.
Coming at it from a corruption point of view is the valid approach because corruption has been one of the defining issue in Irish policies (in the narrow sense of ‘politics’ at the very least). It has, without a shadow of a doubt, influenced the decision-making process and rightly has left the public skeptical of politics.
How we fund politics is a serious issue, but it is as serious as restoring public confidence in the system. Banning corporate donations is a step in that direction, part of a wider program of reforming politics. If parties can’t operate without business backing then they really have serious questions to answer.
@Andrew
Again I will pose the question :
How should any candidate/campaign aquire the funding necessary to compete in the democratic arena?
We can throw around barbs about business backing and corruption and whatever else all day but if we are merely replacing one imperfect system with another we are not addressing the issue.
Myth – “If you are an independent candidate, or a candidate of a smaller party … and have to go up against FF/FG/Lab’s massive campaigners”
Reality – http://jameslawless.ie/2009/10/15/the-price-of-politics-part-ii/
Andrew,
To paraphrase Churchill, democracy is the worst system of government you can imagine until you look at the alternatives. The argument can be put that modern democracies depend on a viable party system because that’s what makes for political stability in society over the long run. Creating a vaiable party demands funding and the bigger the party, the more funding it requires. If the alternative is twenty five smallish parties competing with one another and unable to provide a stable regime at the end of it, who benefits from this kind of fragmentation? Certainly not your average citizen who in the act of voting is delegating responsibility for decision making to their personal choice of representative but who also wants a viable government to be formed at the end of the electoral process that can lead the coutnry for a reasonable period of time. How politics is financed is therefore a hugely important issue and preventing corruption by individual politicians through effective extortion from companies or misuse of such funds for their own private gain or for delivering politicial favours is only part of it.
How parties spend their money on campaigns is up to them, but if they waste it on ineffective tactics then they will lose out with the voters, who will reject them. I have nothing against imposing spending limits on individual candidates or on parties relative to their size. But I also have nothing against businesses, large and small, or corporate bodies, private or civic societies, lending support to any political party whose policies they feel best represents their interests so long as any funding or practical assistance they provide is transparent and fully reported. It is unjust to seek to differentiate between commercial donors and other corporate donors simply because you don’t like business and you don’t trust politicians either.
@James,
Donations & fundraising
@Veronica,
Well I guess that is the difference between us, I don’t accept that companies should be able to influence elections. This has nothing to do with the kind of business they conduct; I don’t think NGOs should be able to don’t either. Just because something is transparent doesn’t negate the impact that it has on the political system.
The idea that it’s corporate donations v having no parties is quite the assertion. Parties receive public funding precisely so they can operate the kind of structures that you are talking about, and that should be sufficient for that purpose. Again, the Green Party don’t take corporate donations and they have the kind of professional structures that you are talking about. A ban on corporate donations not impact the level of public funding that they receive.
Andrew,
The GP wouldn’t attract much in the way of corporate donations anyway – so they will ban them for all other parties that do! I didn’t say banning corporate donations equals having no parties; what I said was that if the aim of the exercise is to reduce the level of spending to a level that makes it impossible for parties to campaign as parties as opposed to just at individual candidate level then the end result will be the fragmentation of parties into smaller entities. This is hardly in the interests of a democratic society.
I agree with you “companies should not be able to influence elections” in the sense that they shouldn’t be able to buy an election by secretly funding one particular party. But transparency rules will take care of this as will overall spending limits on elections, both of which I support. On the transparency question, I advocate (above) immediate public disclosure of donations on a continuous basis, which would go some way to solving the problem.
But I’m sorry, I’m not yet convinced that businesses should be prohibited from making contributions to the political parties whose policies they support simply because they are businesses, whilst donations from unions and other NGOs or any other support/assistance from such non-commercial organisation are not similarly banned. Taken to its logical conclusion, parties and individuals seeking election should only be entitled to raise funds from their signed up official supporters, as all other assistance is by definition seeking a favour of some kind, or seeking to buy votes.
We’re back to James’s question again and what’s in the best interests of a mature,functioning democracy.
“On a side note, Labour currently have the healthiest finances of any party in the state (+ €8 Million ?). This money comes from the unions.”
Where did you get this figure from James? It is completely and utterly wrong. Did you just pull it out of thin air! Labour are nowhere near having that kind of money!!! in fact the party is slightly in debt i think at the moment following the locals and Lisbon.
On Union money, the Labour party receives less than 200k a year i reckon from the various affiliated unions, if even that much. Both FF and FG raise multiples of that with their large national membership draws (anonymous donations of course…) where the prizes include cars etc. Labour can’t afford that type of draw, nor does it have the type of high roller dinners that FF & FG have with ticket prices >€100. All of Labour’s campaigns are primarily funded through the annual membership fee.
I have no problem with corporate donations if the names are published on a quarterly basis. All donations above €100 should be published both personal and corporate.
FG are by far the richest party at the moment, look at the amount of staff they employ and the amount of money they spend on promotional material etc. Its a well known fact at moment that one of the reasons FF are in such financial trouble is that the large corporate and personal donations (all kept below the disclosure limits of course) have moved from FF to FG over last two ears.
The issue in Irish politics is that both FF and FG receive huge numbers of personal donations that come in just below the disclosure limit and that is a problem in our democracy. I’d refer you to this great piece by Mark Couglan
http://thestory.ie/2009/10/22/want-to-bypass-our-donations-system-no-problem/
and to quote a piece of it:
“That rule about one person only being allowed donate €2,539.48 to a politician? They can just donate €5,000 anonymously in €126.96 installments from their personal bank account. A person wants to give more than €5078.95 in multiple donations to various candidates but doesn’t want people knowing he has done it? Do it all in batches of €126.96 – or do it from your personal account and just don’t declare it. It’s simple.”
Its why if you look at SIPO disclosures FF and FG declare only a couple of donations – yet manage to finance massive national organisations.
I have no problem with corporate donations if the names are published on a quarterly basis. All donations above €100 should be published both personal and corporate.
Equally, anyone who does any level of canvassing, leaflet dropping and so on for more than ten hours a year should have their names published.
@ John
What’s that supposed to mean?
A donation of ten hours work to a campaign is worth at least €100.
@ JL
“how should any candidate/campaign aquire the funding necessary to succeed?”
The ‘funding’ necessary to succeed, you say? Just how do you presume that FF contested elections before the moneymen arrived in the 60s?
@ VMD
“the end result will be the fragmentation of parties into smaller entities. This is hardly in the interests of a democratic society.”
Is this related to your previous musings on a list system? How are either of these proposals related to democracy? Indeed, they seem to be the antithesis of a truly free elections, by ensuring that the big party machines can keep themselves in existence for perpetuity beyond the existence of actual political ideas.
@Cathal,
I wasn’t sure about that figure so I put a question mark beside it. Will update the main post accordingly. It was cited at the weekend during a discussion with other politicos, including one who is currently working with the Labour party. It was being mentioned to contrast the ruddy fine health of the Labour party as against the struggling fortunes of FF (which as a party is 3M in debt now). Interesting and not especially suprising to hear you say FG has the greatest warchest going at present.
@John,
Wasn’t sure where you were coming from with that but get you after the clarification. I think the idea is a bit extreme to be honest. The people that go out and canvass are friends, family and grassroots party members. I think it would be a bit much to go writing them all up in a list somewhere. Again with respect, I feel your post suggests a certain prejudice that people are in it for what they can get? I have the greatest respect for those that involve themselves in the political process (for any side) and this kind of grass roots activism is as coal face as it gets. And in reality the kind of guys who will go out thanklessly on a winter’s evening and shove flyers through endless letterboxes or take a bullet for the party on a hundred doorsteps are not ‘fatcats’ looking for some kind of illicit favouring, the latter types will throw money at things instead if that’s their game. And in reality also, despite a hundred scandals and media reports the ‘salt of the earth’ types still vastly outnumber any ‘freeloaders’ in politics, at least at ground level.
@EWI
I’m not sure how elections were funded in those years but I would hazard a guess quite similarly to how a great many candidates (including me) funded their campaigns last year (locals 09) i.e. by a combination of local fundraisers (be it table quizzes, race nights, music nights etc) along with a combination of personal savings and personal borrowings. I think this is reasonable however it is also true that it poses a disincentive to many and doubtless precludes many from the process who would otherwise like to step up. It explicitly advantages the wealthier in society which in my view is not what a democracy should be about. Corporate donations is only one piece of a much wider pie and if we are going to review the process there are a great many other aspects that need equal consideration.
It explicitly advantages the wealthier in society which in my view is not what a democracy should be about.
This is why the well-established concept of placing spending limits on election spending exists.
@EWI
Limits which allow 25k to be spent in the final 3 weeks and any amount in the 3 or 6 months before that?
Limits which allow 25k to be spent in the final 3 weeks and any amount in the 3 or 6 months before that?
Once the principle has been established, then these things can very easily be improved.
Some other suggestions: getting political PR off the public payroll (the parties can do that for themselves); getting rid of the ‘special advisor’ party hacks; and empowering a commission to conduct competitions for and appoint qualified citizens to, the various quango boards.
What I get for not following the thread.
There are plenty examples elsewhere (well, one big one primarily) of a regulatory framework which publishes donor details right down to small change in campaign funding. My preference for following those examples has nothing at all to do with theoretical waffle about the intent of donors and everything to do with removing all doubt from the process. Gavin Sheridan’s already posted elsewhere how piss-poor and evade-able the system we have is now.
I don’t think your ma or my gran has an automatic right to privacy when they’re putting money into a parliamentary election campaign. I did not suggest not making the candidates themselves subject to the same campaign donation requirements or limits. And frankly if you can’t find 50 people in the whole State who’ll chuck you a hundred (or some other permutation of two numbers to multiply), you aren’t going to have much luck getting anywhere near a quota anyway unless all your efforts go into door-knocking instead of spending.
Given all that, from where I’m sitting the notion of this leading to “only rich people can run for election” sounds like bollocks.
The ‘KildareStreet hat’ referenced above wants to keep track on candidates, their donors, and publish aggregated information which is currently concealed by SIPO’s weak-kneed regulations. If someone’s skirting the limits by making smaller donations to multiple candidates in multiple constituencies, which in aggregate amount to a substantial sum, then I want to be able to tell people about it so they can make up their own minds about whether or not it’s nefarious. “Trust me” doesn’t cut it in a grown-up system.
At this point, most of all, I think that this is merely a small part of a larger requirement for transparency.
Gavin and I both could bore you all for hours with stories of the shit being pulled to conceal TDs’ and Senators’ expenses even with an FOI law nominally on our side. If you get caught flouting the limits today on political donations then you can say “oops” and hand the cash back and SIPO says “OK, gents, ye’re grand so”. Bored junior hacks at newspapers sometimes randomly turn up discrepancies between company returns and party returns because nobody else can even be bothered to look.
This stuff is broken so badly right now that only a *severe* swing in the right direction can hope to reinstill any confidence. I care not even a small jot if it profoundly inconveniences election agents – not even if the changes would appear too draconian in some other jurisdictions. If we’re going to err I’d much rather it were on this side of the fence. And I’ll wager that you’d have a tough time selling the alternative point of view to the voters.
Oh, and: €25k between writ and election is between three and four times more than the number I’d consider a sensible maximum. Mentioning this to put the above into sharper context.
In the UK you get about six thousand sterling for twice as many voters and only one seat to win, and you have to account for every last penny to the returning officer within six weeks. They manage.
John, thanks for that. As to:
“Gavin and I both could bore you all for hours with stories of the shit being pulled to conceal TDs’ and Senators’ expenses even with an FOI law nominally on our side.”
Let’s mention as well the practice of huge ‘loans’ from wealthy candidates/party members, which are then never repaid.
Rather than inventorising the litany of possible and previous abuses would anyone like to offer some practical and constructive suggestions to remove the capacity for corruption whilst ensuring within reason that everyone gets a fair chance to run? There are some good people in politics in fact I would suggest a lot more good on all sides the house than bad. Let’s figure out how to help the good guys compete fairly and squarely and move on from the bad old days in every sense. I’ve made some suggestions in OP and in later comments, interested in others.
Here’s something I read recently:
Most often, there’s some good reason for blaming people. After all, mistakes were made. But people aren’t the core reason [...] They are part of the dynamics, but failures are not simply isolated human missteps that can be avoided in the future by replacing one or two individuals. Instead, the issues are subtle variations of systemic problems. The same few problems crop up, over and over again [...] As it happens, this is great news, because in the failures we can study the systemic issues, understand them, and create a new method for moving forward.
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/mar2010/id20100315_022580.htm
It’s very hard to find fault with the author’s very logical reasoning, and to see the applicability of the principle to regulating for systemic failures such as the subversion of democracy by big money (as Gavin and John have so ably been keeping track of).
You haven’t corrected the reference to Labour’s finances yet
@Fergus updated.
However re this figure (the “€8 mill Labour warchest”) I did recheck with my original source and was told that whilst it may not be residing in the accounts just yet, money is not expected to be a problem for Labour at the GE.
However re this figure (the “€8 mill Labour warchest”) I did recheck with my original source and was told that whilst it may not be residing in the accounts just yet, money is not expected to be a problem for Labour at the GE.
Assuming this to be true (a very big ‘if’, indeed), then yes, let’s tackle this as another one of the big contributions that needs to be tackled as a distortion of the electoral process.
James,
I reckon they’re trying to wind you up! €8m my eye! Unless they’ve installed a printing press in an adjacent building to HQ…. but then there’s no chance of that, now is there?