Press release from the Green Party today to capitalise on the Creighton-O’Flynn-Anglo Ten donations-Fine Gael issue. Opening line;
The Green Party Leader and Environment Minister John Gormley has said that he intends to change the way politics is funded…
A quick look back into The Irish Times archive for their coverage of the announcement of John Gormley’s selection as environment minister. July 7 2007;
The newly elected leader of the Green Party, Minister for the Environment John Gormley, said yesterday he wants changes in the ways political parties are funded.
That was 1,103 days ago. Or 157 weeks. 26,472 hours. 95,299,200 seconds.
Tick-tock tick-tock.
I would doubt that John has enough Ministerial days left to deal with this thorny problem and after the election it is likely he will have to examine it as a private citizen and no doubt the Govt. will take his views into consideration.
Ah, well. What do you expect?
Promises, promises, meanwhile:
“From hour to hour we ripe and ripe, from hour to hour we rot and rot-and thereby hangs a tale!”
Just think a while. If John and his jolly greens had stayed out of government, what fun he would have been able to have at FF’s expense. But, who was there to have made up the numbers after the last election? Think about it.
Reform of corporate donations did not form part of the Programme for Government that was agreed by FF and the GP in 2007. It was included in the revised Programme for Government that was agreed in Oct 2009. This provided for a review of current arrangements with a view to creating a General Political Fund to which members of the public could donate, and which would be distributed to parties on the basis of vote share. Gormley has committed to implementing this in the next Dail term (September 2010). There has been only 1 Dail term since the rPFG was announced, at which stage the review had not taken place.
Please bear in mind that the GP is the only party in Ireland who wants to end direct corporate donations, and that the Dail isn’t some sort of legislative version of McDonalds.