Analysis: The Irish political finance system has a mixture of British and European characteristics, with candidates subject to clear spending limits
The Government may be loaded enough to spend €336,000 on a bike shed, but Irish politicians won’t be spending lavishly on the upcoming general election. The 2020 general election cost €7.3m (not even 22 bike sheds). The Irish political finance system has, unsurprisingly, a mixture of British and European characteristics, with the older, British-style parts are focused on election expenses. Candidates are subject to spending limits from €30,150 for a three-seat constituency to €42,500 for a five-seat constituency. This keeps billionaires out of Irish elections. You can’t buy an election; you’re not even allowed to try.
Parties can only spend money in so far as candidates allocate portions of their limits to the party. Candidates achieving one quarter of the electoral quota are reimbursed for some of their election expenses (the lower of €8,500 or their actual expenses) and can only allocate a maximum of 50% to their party, which means they have to raise the rest themselves. This is why there have been a lot of pub quizzes and GoFundMe appeals in political circles recently.
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However, this fundraising often isn’t enough and candidates have to spend their own money. This is one of a raft of factors which helps to keep Irish politics more-or-less middle class. Actually, candidate expenditure usually does not even reach the spending limits set in legislation.
Most European countries, including Britain, took a very important decision to prohibit paid broadcast advertising so the 20th-century medium that drove much of the need for campaign funds in the US did not have the same effect in Europe, Britain or Ireland. Irish election expenditure is still dominated by posters and flyers, even though candidates continue to reuse posters until the ageing process renders them almost unrecognisable.
Social media advertising is becoming more important, but targeting your advertisement at the small area of an Irish constituency is still relatively inexpensive. Moreover, it is not clear how effective this is compared to posters and knocking on doors. You might think social media is a good way to get to younger voters, with no door of their own to answer, but TikTok cannot be targeted at Irish constituencies.
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If election spending is reminiscent of Britain, income, by contrast, is more European. There are very low limits on donations (€2,500 for parties €1,000 for candidates, that is 0.003 bike sheds) and even lower thresholds for the disclosure of donations. Private income has been effectively replaced by public funding. This is very different to Britain, where public funding is miserly and the size of political donations is unlimited.
There are two main public-funding schemes, one that supports parties only and one that supports all parliamentarians, whether members of parties or independents. The total provided under the party scheme in 2021 was €5.8m and the amount given to parliamentary parties and independents the same year was €7.6m. Over the full five years of a parliamentary term, this would total to €71.8m or almost ten times the cost of the 2020 general election. This is generous, but it’s not bike-shed expenditure.
The cost of funding to parties (not independents) per voter per year is somewhere in between Germany and Belgium, but below Spain, Estonia, Finland, Austria, and Croatia. This is my own calculation from the Political Party Database (usually 2017) and Wikipedia (most recent lower house election before 2017). A cross-national comparison of the distribution of political finance among parties places Ireland among egalitarian, Northern European countries. The public income (and overall income) closely tracks the vote share of parties in the previous election, except that smaller parties get a little bit more per vote than their larger competitors.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Today with Claire Byrne, should we do away with election posters?
If funding of politicians is so generous, why are elections so inexpensive? Politicians are not allowed to spend this money on the one thing which matters most to them – elections. Rather, it is supposed to support the policy, legislative, and representational work of parties and elected representatives. More importantly, the system tries to treat incumbent candidates and challengers relatively equally. Of course, party employees campaign and canvass - and they are even candidates sometimes - but this has to be done on their own time.
Obviously, the distinction between policy development and party organisation versus campaigning can be difficult to make. Nonetheless, parties and TDs are not able to purchase posters, flyers, advertising and other campaign products and services with their substantial state funding. If the division between electoral expenditure and state funding were not working relatively well, it is hard to imagine a Minister for Finance relying on a friend's employees to put up a few posters. Nevertheless, this is no excuse for a minister failing to submit accurate reports of his election expenditure.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, Irish Independent news reporter Gabija Gataveckaite on Paschal Donohoe's admission that he made a "clear mistake" over the election posters controversy
While elections on the cheap and generous state funding would be familiar to our neighbours, one aspect of Irish political finance is more exotic. The importance of cross-border parties has led to political finance regulations with extra-territorial reach. In 2013, then Fine Gael minister Phil Hogan rejected the Standards in Public Office’s draft guidelines for political party accounts, because they included local branches. He argued this would place an unreasonable burden on local volunteers, a very British view of parties independent of the state, run on a shoestring and dependent on members’ generosity with their time.
Since then, Fine Gael and most other parties have become very interested in the local branches of Sinn Féin. The latter party has 16 properties, Fine Gael has one and the rest do not report any property. Sinn Féin’s competitors also got worked up about that party's bequest bonanza. Some wealthy UK residents have been very generous to Sinn Féin in their wills: it has reported £3.35m of bequests to the UK Electoral Commission, as of September 2023.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Late Debate, Sinn Féin reveals five election expenses not reported to SIPO in 2016
Other parties have become worried that they will not be able to compete with Sinn Fein’s local property empire and its access to unlimited donations from the UK. In practice, the party’s Northern Ireland branch has had a much lower income, even per voter, than it has in the Republic, because UK parties lack our generous public funding. Nevertheless, in order to qualify for public funding in the future, parties will have to report on their assets at local level and outside of Ireland.
It is hard to know how the new rules will play out in competition between Sinn Féin and other parties in the future and it’s the least of SF's worries at the moment. Our politicians are quite happy with bargain-basement elections and comfortably-funded parties and parliamentarians because that’s the way they designed it for themselves.
So far, third parties (not candidates or parties), have largely stayed out of Irish elections, though the Burkes of Mayo and the Pro-Life campaign reported some expenditure in 2020. The Electoral Reform Act of 2022 tried to pre-emptively regulate online election advertising, especially by third parties, but has not been implemented, seemingly out of a concern about coordination with the EU’s Digital Services Act. If third parties do begin spending on Irish elections, current concerns about the likes of poster expenditure and rich British pensioners may look quaint.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
