Justice Minister Dermot Ahern has said he hopes the Fianna Fáil fundraising review will lead to a situation where any money gathered by the party will be handled by people answerable to the party.
Asked about the recent revelations at the Mahon Tribunal that showed large sums of money were being controlled by people that were not party members, he told RTÉ's The Week In Politics:
‘Unfortunately there were in all political parties practices where the accounting wasn't great.’
Mr Ahern also welcomed the scrapping of the Fianna Fáil Galway Races tent. ‘I was never really in favour of the tent because I think it sent out all the wrong signals,’ Mr Ahern said.
‘My party unlike Fine Gael was not a party of big business. It was a party originally formed out of small business people, small farmers, the real people of Ireland they call them, and I think we should go back to that,’ he said.
‘That I believe is what Brian Cowen is about, he is saying if we have 60,000 members, which we do, there surely is the wherewithal, and the financial wherewithal within those 60,000, in order to fund our political party.’
Mr Ahern added that he is on record in the past as saying there should be State funding for political parties.
