Strengthening the SIPO law to make religions accountable

Michael Nugent

Amnesty International Ireland is refusing to obey the law on funding of political purposes. They are refusing to return an illegal donation from America to help to repeal the eighth amendment.

Atheist Ireland has published a report arguing that Amnesty is mistaken in taking this position, both ethically and practically.

Atheist Ireland's fundraising is also restricted by this law. Despite this, Atheist Ireland supports the law and argues that it should be strengthened not subverted.

The SIPO law exists to ensure that good arguments can be heard because of their merits, and not get drowned out by those who happen to have the wealthiest supporters.

Here is a link to the full report.

Sections 4 and 5 are the parts that are of primary relevance to this board. They argue why and how the law should be strengthened to include religions within its accountability, by shifting the test of accountability from political donations to political spending.

gctest50

And Iona and friends have never received a cent ?

Or is the other side all powered by

Wealthy, pizza-empire-owning grannies in Donegal


http://bocktherobber.com

Michael Nugent

Well, that is the key argument in the report.

That the test for being accountable under the law should be changed from donations to spending, so that it is harder for religious bodies to avoid registering.

gctest50

That'd be for the best, " by their own book " it's ok to lie if it furthers the glooooooria or something

Peregrinus

Michael Nugent wrote: »

. . . Sections 4 and 5 are the parts that are of primary relevance to this board. They argue why and how the law should be strengthened to include religions within its accountability, by shifting the test of accountability from political donations to political spending.

Is there a conceptual problem here? If you have a body that engages in both political campaigning and other activities, it seems straightforward to oblige them to declare their spending on campaigning, but I'm not sure that there can be a meaningful obligation to require them to declare how that spending was funded. Much of the expenditure may come from general funds, raised from a variety of sources which, at the time it was raised, was not committed to any one particular purpose of the organisation. If the organisation raises substantial funds, and makes its own decisions about how to allocate those funds across its various activities, objectives, etc, then I don't think you will normally be able to point to particular funders beyond the organisation as funding any particular activity that the organisation undertakes.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something - it wouldn't be the first time - but I'm not sure how you see this working? If an organisation exeeds the spending threshold on political campaigning, does it then have to disclose all its sources of funding for all its expenditure for all purposes? It doesn't seem to be that that would be particularly useful or relevant information. Or does it just have to disclose the sources of funding for its political campaigning expenditure? In which case, how does that work in practice?

Michael Nugent

Peregrinus wrote: »

Is there a conceptual problem here? If you have a body that engages in both political campaigning and other activities, it seems straightforward to oblige them to declare their spending on campaigning, but I'm not sure that there can be a meaningful obligation to require them to declare how that spending was funded. Much of the expenditure may come from general funds, raised from a variety of sources which, at the time it was raised, was not committed to any one particular purpose of the organisation. If the organisation raises substantial funds, and makes its own decisions about how to allocate those funds across its various activities, objectives, etc, then I don't think you will normally be able to point to particular funders beyond the organisation as funding any particular activity that the organisation undertakes.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something - it wouldn't be the first time - but I'm not sure how you see this working? If an organisation exeeds the spending threshold on political campaigning, does it then have to disclose all its sources of funding for all its expenditure for all purposes? It doesn't seem to be that that would be particularly useful or relevant information. Or does it just have to disclose the sources of funding for its political campaigning expenditure? In which case, how does that work in practice?

This is roughly how it works.

1. There are two aspects to what the law is trying to do:

(a) Find out who funds political activities of an organisation, so that it is transparent who is influencing political decision making; and

(b) Place limits on the maximum donation, for political purposes, that an organisation can take in any one year from any one donor.

2. The law does not seek to find out the donors, or limit the donations, of money given for non-political purposes. This typically includes general funds and membership fees etc. You have to open a separate bank account for political donations, and it is only that bank account that SIPO will monitor.

3. The next question is: who has to register? The answer is political parties, election candidates, and third parties. Third Parties are people or organisations that are not political parties or election candidates, but that seek to influence elections or political decisions between elections.

4. The next question is: how do you know that you are a Third Party? The law says that you are a Third Party if you accept a donation for political purposes of over €100 in any calendar year. Once you meet that test, you must register as a Third party and are subject to the limitations of (a) and (b) above.

5. The problem arises in meeting the test in point 4 above. Because the test is that the money is given for a political purpose, the test lies in the intent of the donor. Because that is hard to prove, many politically active groups simply declare that they have accepted no donations for political purposes, and it hard to go behind that claim.

6. The solution to this that SIPO has proposed, and which Atheist Ireland supports, is that the test for having to register should be that you spend a certain amount in a year on for a political purpose (say €5,000), not that you have accepted a certain donation for political purposes. That would be harder to evade and easier to prove.

Peregrinus

Thanks for this.

So the consequence would be that, e.g., if an organisation spends more than €5,000 for political purposes it must register as a third party, which then means (a) that it must disclose the donations it receives for political purposes, and (b) those donations are capped at a certain level. And this is enforced by requiring the organisation to maintain a separate bank account for receiving political donations, which SIPO will monitor.

Obviously, you could have an organisation that engages in political spending, but it largely self-funds this from its own resources, or funds it from general donations which are not tied to political purposes. (And my guess is that this would be the situation for most of the larger churches.) But that's OK; if we know that, e.g. €10,000 of Catholic Church political expenditure is financed by donations routed through the designated account for political donations, then we know that the balance is funded by the church from its own resources. Therefore, we know who's funding it, which is what we are trying to achieve.

Michael Nugent

Yes, that's the change we are seeking. With the proviso that it doesn't seem to be anywhere near the top of the Government's agenda.

The reason it is in the news now is that Amnesty, under the current law, is one of the groups that treats the law subjectively, and last week announced that it was refusing to give back a €137,000 political donation on unspecified human rights grounds.

silverharp

I remember when Amnesty used to be above reproach , it seems to be more a vehicle for personal advancement these days. If the law is enforced Colm and the lads wont be laughing

smacl

Michael Nugent wrote: »

The law does not seek to find out the donors, or limit the donations, of money given for non-political purposes.

What is the test applied here which defines whether a given purpose is or is not political? Do organisations that are involved in political and apolitical activities need to get their donors so specify which type of activity their donations are going toward and account for such money accordingly? It seems like an accounting nightmare.

recedite

smacl wrote: »

It seems like an accounting nightmare.

It should not be too onerous for a lobbying organisation, and after all it would only kick in if they were spending more than €5K on the lobbying.

Even individual persons such as tradesmen who are self employed will be quite familiar with the concept of having separate business and personal bank accounts, and also to separately apportioning a % of costs such as motoring, light and heat etc..

Michael Nugent

smacl wrote: »

What is the test applied here which defines whether a given purpose is or is not political?

In short, if it is aimed at influencing the outcome of an election or referendum, or promoting or procuring a particular outcome in relation to a policy or policies or functions of the Government or any public authority.

smacl wrote: »

Do organisations that are involved in political and apolitical activities need to get their donors so specify which type of activity their donations are going toward and account for such money accordingly?

To oversimplify, yes.

smacl wrote: »

It seems like an accounting nightmare.

It isn't. Atheist Ireland has no problems doing it.

Peregrinus

smacl wrote: »

It seems like an accounting nightmare.

Not a nightmare. Organisations with multiple purposes and multiple sources of funding would typically be doing it anyway. If, say, the Red Cross launches an appeal to provide relief for this natural disaster or refugees from that conflict, they'll be needing to account for the proceeds of that appeal separately from their other donations and income, if only because they would suffer reputational damage if it emerged that the proceeds of special appeals were going into general funds which might be spent on purposes other than those repreresented to the donors.

The way I see it is this; under the current law, churches and others are taking the view that they are not "third parties" because they do not receive donations for "political purposes". even though they may in fact spend money for political purposes. Therefore they do not register.

Under the amended law, they would have to register, because they spend money for political purposes. But presumably (unless the pattern of donations changes) they would still take the view that they are not receiving donations for political purposes, and thus they would register, but report receiving zero political donations.

What would be achieved? Possibly two things:

1. The amended law might require not only that these agencies register as third parties, but that they report the level of their political spending, so we would know how much they were spending on political purposes, even if we still didn't know very much about how it was funded.

2. Once they're registered, it might be that the SIPO authorities are in a better position to audit/inspect/test their claims the donations they receive are not earmarked for political purposes.

smacl

Michael Nugent wrote: »

To oversimplify, yes.

Thanks for the reply. While I get all this in principle, if such an organisation's major costs include staff salary, rent, light, heat, transport, phones, etc... e.g. normal running costs of any organisation, I'd assume that every staff member would be required to keep a detailed time sheet of their daily activities such that costs can be allocated against either political or apolitical activity and paid for out of the matching account. Basically, you'd need to run every activity as a fully budgeted and costed project, where all costs and times could be externally audited. You also have the complication that an activity that began as an apolitical one could become political over time. I'd guess with a decent accountant, financial smarts and complicit donors you could run rings around all of this. Only sayin'...

recedite

smacl wrote: »

I'd guess with a decent accountant, financial smarts and complicit donors you could run rings around all of this. Only sayin'...

As with any kind of self assessment, there is a certain presumption of honesty. If there was a sense that an organisation was deliberately concealing the truth in any way, then its likely they would be monitored a lot more closely than before.

smacl

recedite wrote: »

As with any kind of self assessment, there is a certain presumption of honesty. If there was a sense that an organisation was deliberately concealing the truth in any way, then its likely they would be monitored a lot more closely than before.

What, like Iona?

recedite

smacl wrote: »

What, like Iona?

What dishonesty are you implying?

Hotblack Desiato

silverharp wrote: »

I remember when Amnesty used to be above reproach , it seems to be more a vehicle for personal advancement these days.

Translation - 'They are saying and doing things I disagree with'.

recedite

There is a lot of hypocrisy in evidence here.

Iona are saying and doing things that many in this forum would disagree with, but they are honestly complying with the law.

Amnesty are saying and doing things many in this forum would agree with, but are not honestly complying with the law.

Lets call a spade a spade.

smacl

recedite wrote: »

There is a lot of hypocrisy in evidence here.

Iona are saying and doing things that many in this forum would disagree with, but they are honestly complying with the law.

Amnesty are saying and doing things many in this forum would agree with, but are not honestly complying with the law.

Lets call a spade a spade.

Not so sure Rec, from the IT article linked previously;

IT wrote:

Last year, Lolek received donations totalling €273,042 and had boosted its cash reserves by 20 percent to €304,032 at the end of 2016.

There is no breakdown in the accounts of the source of the donations.

So assuming they're working within the letter of the law this didn't arrive directly to them as a single donation from a foreign investor. All that suggests to me is they have convoluted mechanisms for receiving money from unknown unnamed sources. Honesty isn't a word I'd use here, as dishonest and illegal are not the same thing.

expectationlost

Michael Nugent wrote: »

Amnesty International Ireland is refusing to obey the law on funding of political purposes. They are refusing to return an illegal donation from America to help to repeal the eighth amendment.

Atheist Ireland has published a report arguing that Amnesty is mistaken in taking this position, both ethically and practically.

Atheist Ireland's fundraising is also restricted by this law. Despite this, Atheist Ireland supports the law and argues that it should be strengthened not subverted.

The SIPO law exists to ensure that good arguments can be heard because of their merits, and not get drowned out by those who happen to have the wealthiest supporters.

Here is a link to the full report.

Sections 4 and 5 are the parts that are of primary relevance to this board. They argue why and how the law should be strengthened to include religions within its accountability, by shifting the test of accountability from political donations to political spending.

I think Amnesty got caught out here by the OSF leak and Educate Equality by the Humanists business model but Im trying to understand Amnestys arguement about human rights versus politics.

Im very warying of large donations from overseas or from Irish citizens but so many NGOs depend on them... has all the money given to ICCL and Amensty etc over years potentionally been illegal, its probable we wouldn't have had the 'childrens rights' referendum, the Marriage referendum or a possible abortion referendum without Chuck Feeneys funding.

I gather their main arguements in defence is 1. free association and 2. that they are working on human rights norms that the government has already signed up to so it can't be politics, its just making sure what the gov itself has already promised would happen is happening. I think Atheist Ireland often makes the arguement that Ireland has already signed up these human rights norms, in relations to the changes it wants (rather then in defending its fundraising practices).

I presume various religious groups would also claim to working towards ensuring human rights.

Peregrinus

smacl wrote: »

Thanks for the reply. While I get all this in principle, if such an organisation's major costs include staff salary, rent, light, heat, transport, phones, etc... e.g. normal running costs of any organisation, I'd assume that every staff member would be required to keep a detailed time sheet of their daily activities such that costs can be allocated against either political or apolitical activity and paid for out of the matching account. Basically, you'd need to run every activity as a fully budgeted and costed project, where all costs and times could be externally audited. You also have the complication that an activity that began as an apolitical one could become political over time. I'd guess with a decent accountant, financial smarts and complicit donors you could run rings around all of this. Only sayin'...

I think there's two ways you could approach this.

One is to treat fixed costs - the staff, the premises, the power bill - as not being attributable to any particular activity; they're just a foundation that needs to be constructed before any activity at all can be undertaken. On this basis the organisation's "political expenditure" is the extra money that they spend, that they wouldn't have spent if they hadn't taken on a particular political project. So, any extra printing, advertising, etc, undertaken specifically in connection with this process. Any extra staff hired to work on this project, or the staff costs of existing staff diverted to work on this project.

The other is to take the fixed costs and apportion them across all of the organisation's activities. So, 60% (say) of our work is not "political" as defined for SIPO purposes and 40% is? OK, then 40% of our fixed cost base gets included in the figure we quote in our SIPO return.

You can make arguments in support of either approach, and different approaches may be appropriate for different organisations. An organisation that does largely non-political work but, say, issues a public statement at ever election calling on politicians to be mindful of X, Y and Z could reasonably say that their only political expenditure is the cost to them of the amount of time and effort that they spend preparing that statement. Conversely a campaigning organisation that engages in both political and non-political campaigns, and does a lot of both, might more appropriately apportion all its costs across its various activities.

This is an accounting matter, and the question the accountants will ask themselves is whether the accounts prepared by the organisation show a true and fair view of the organisation's affairs, and whether they comply with any legal regulatory requirements. Presumably, if the law is amended as suggested to require disclosure of political expenditure, there'll be regulations defining "political expenditure" and there can be rules in there for what the appropriate way to identify political expenditure is. To the extent that there are no rules, or there are rules but they don't cover a particular case, then it's back to looking at what the accounting standards (issued by the professional accounting bodies) may require, to the general principles of accountancy, and to the true and fair view.

This isn't new stuff. There's lots of regulated activities where accounts have to be published and/or filed, and there's regulation and/or professional standards about how those accounts must be prepared and what they must show, and this gets discussed at some length between the regulators, the accountancy bodies and the representatives of the regulated businesses. And, yeah, it can be a bit blurry around the edges, and many things are matters of judgment rather than of clear and unambiguous rules. But no system is perfect, and it would be wrong to assume that the organisations concerned can "run rings" around the regulatory requirements, to the point where you might as well not bother having any requirements at all.

Peregrinus

[QUOTE=smacl;105576901So assuming they're working within the letter of the law this didn't arrive directly to them as a single donation from a foreign investor. All that suggests to me is they have convoluted mechanisms for receiving money from unknown unnamed sources . . . [/QUOTE]
There is a simpler explanation, which is that the €273,042 figure represents a largish number of relatively small donations, and we have no reason for assuming that any particular fraction of them came from overseas, and therefore no reason to hypothese "convoluted mechanisms" for concealing donations.

Have you any reason at all to think that they received a donation which they were bound to disclose but nevertheless did not disclose?

smacl

Peregrinus wrote: »

Have you any reason at all to think that they received a donation which they were bound to disclose but nevertheless did not disclose?

I shouldn't have to need to suspect anyone. If donations from certain destinations above specified amounts are prohibited by SIPO, surely the onus here would be on Iona to be fully transparent as to where all and any donations come from to demonstrate that they are in fact above board. As it is we (the public) don't know where this money has come from, so while it is most probably all above board legally, a lack of transparency makes it ethically suspicious. While you might say this is a matter between Iona's auditor and the Revenue, I would personally suspect foreign funding channelled indirectly via local 3rd parties. I doubt I'm alone in this speculation and it appears to be a matter that Lolek are less than keen to discuss.

Peregrinus

I'm not abreast of the SIPO legislation, but isn't Iona obliged to identify donations above the limit from foreign sources? So if they publish a figure for donations and identify none above the limit from foreign sources, they are saying that they received no such donations. There is no lack of transparency there, that I can see.

What is not transparent is who there small and/or local donors are, but they are not obliged to be transparent about those. The SIPO regime doesn't seek transparency with respect to those donors.

It seems to me that your attitude to Iona is vaguely analogous to demanding that I produce receipts for all my possessions to prove that none of them are stolen. When you have evidence that I have stolen goods in my possession, come and talk to me. Until then, you can take yourself and your transparency elsewhere!

smacl

Peregrinus wrote: »

I'm not abreast of the SIPO legislation, but isn't Iona obliged to identify donations above the limit from foreign sources? So if they publish a figure for donations and identify none above the limit from foreign sources, they are saying that they received no such donations. There is no lack of transparency there, that I can see.

I'd imagine this rather depends on whether the donor is looking for visibility or happier to stay anonymous. The former seems to be the case with the OSF and Amnesty. In the latter case, if I was a foreign donor wishing to donate to an Irish organisation, I'd simply transfer the funds to a locally complicit business first (e.g. for services) and then have that business (or businesses or individuals) donate the money onwards. Given the rise of technologies such as cryptos, moving money across borders is quite a bit simpler than it used to be so all you need really are the funds and the will to proceed.

What is not transparent is who there small and/or local donors are, but they are not obliged to be transparent about those. The SIPO regime doesn't seek transparency with respect to those donors.

Quite so, the SIPO regime doesn't demand transparency, Iona doesn't offer it, hence there is no transparency. As per my previous post, this is most likely entirely legal, but all that tells us is that there have been no large direct foreign donations. Paint me cynical, but if I see any lobbying group receiving significant funding from an unknown source, I become openly suspicious.

It seems to me that your attitude to Iona is vaguely analogous to demanding that I produce receipts for all my possessions to prove that none of them are stolen. When you have evidence that I have stolen goods in my possession, come and talk to me. Until then, you can take yourself and your transparency elsewhere!

Interesting attitude. If I ran a lobbying organisation and there was public speculation in the media as to how it was funded, I'd be very keen to provide transparency above and beyond minimum legal requirements. I don't think the analogy of comparing a lobbying organisation such as Iona to a private individual stands up particularly well, but if you wanted to go down that path I'd suggest that a better comparison would be looking for proof of ownership when buying something from a third party. Iona are trying to sell us a world view, but who's world view is it, who paid for it?

Peregrinus

Smacl, the lobby groups all receive the significant bulk of their funding from undisclosed sources, don't they? Why are we picking on Iona here? (Apart from the fact that it's fun, of course.)

For what it's worth, I'd favour a maximally transparent regime, in which all donations (above a trivial level, maybe) must be disclosed, and I'd make no distinction between donations from overseas sources and those from domestic sources. I think they're both equally worrisome, and potentially corrupting.

But, in the absence of such a regime, I see no basis for a particular denunciation of Iona.

smacl

Peregrinus wrote: »

Why are we picking on Iona here? (Apart from the fact that it's fun, of course.)

Of course because it's fun, and it panders to my own personal biases. To me though it does provide a certain context to the issue of Amnesty which makes me wonder whether they've arrived at this juncture through naivety, belligerence or something else entirely. I don't doubt that with a bit of effort they could have snuck this money in under the radar so to speak. I find the holier than thou attitude of Atheist Ireland unconvincing and wonder if they got the offer of a hundred grand of funding from an external source how they'd proceed.

For what it's worth, I'd favour a maximally transparent regime, in which all donations (above a trivial level, maybe) must be disclosed, and I'd make no distinction between donations from overseas sources and those from domestic sources. I think they're both equally worrisome, and potentially corrupting.

Agreed 100%

But, in the absence of such a regime, I see no basis for a particular denunciation of Iona.

Maybe, but they're certainly the first lobby group that come to mind in the context of A&A and obscure sources of revenue. Plus, of course, I don't like them nor the way they lawyer up at the vaguest criticism. These things do not say 'Trustworthy' to me, and to be honest I'd guess they've done more damage to the Catholic church in Ireland than Atheist Ireland is ever likely to.

recedite

smacl wrote: »

Of course because it's fun, and it panders to my own personal biases. To me though it does provide a certain context to the issue of Amnesty which makes me wonder whether they've arrived at this juncture through naivety, belligerence or something else entirely.

So you have picked on Iona, which is SIPO compliant and presumed to be acting honestly, and compared them to Amnesty which refused to register its lobbying with SIPO, or declare its large donation from George Soros, or hand that €137K back, or else spend it on some non-political purpose instead such as helping the homeless.

One organisation is compliant with the law, and one is openly flouting it.

I don't doubt that with a bit of effort they could have snuck this money in under the radar so to speak. I find the holier than thou attitude of Atheist Ireland unconvincing and wonder if they got the offer of a hundred grand of funding from an external source how they'd proceed.

They did try to sneak it in by saying it was not for political purposes, but they got caught.
Atheist Ireland, on the other hand, is on record as saying they turned away large donations in order to remain compliant with the law.

As a voluntary organisation, Atheist Ireland has limited resources, and part of our work has a political purpose. We always ask the SIPO office about the status of any potential donations, in order to ensure that we remain within the law.
We have turned down large offers of political donations because they breach this law. Another person wanted to make a large donation towards our crowdfunding for Freedom of Information Act requests about the impact of religion in ETB schools. We had to tell them that we could only accept such a donation for non-political purposes.

smacl

recedite wrote: »

One organisation is compliant with the law, and one is openly flouting it.

I agree, and this is something I've already noted. Now if you re-read Michael's opening post you'll see the following;

Michael Nugent wrote: »

The SIPO law exists to ensure that good arguments can be heard because of their merits, and not get drowned out by those who happen to have the wealthiest supporters.

With respect to recent debates that have become politicised such as repealing the 8th, marriage equality, etc... how well resourced would you consider the Iona Institute to be, and where exactly do you think those resources are derived from? That they've managed to stay within the letter of the law seems probable, that they spend a lot of other people's money to push their agenda seems equally probably yet we don't know quite who these people are. Interestingly, the SIPO register of public donors lists who the donors are but not who they've donated to nor how much.

Nick Park

Peregrinus wrote: »

What is not transparent is who there small and/or local donors are, but they are not obliged to be transparent about those. The SIPO regime doesn't seek transparency with respect to those donors.

Such transparency could only be in very general terms (eg number of donors, average amount given, how many donors were in Ireland). An organisation disclosing anything more detailed would, I believe, get hammered for data protection breaches.

smacl

Nick Park wrote: »

Such transparency could only be in very general terms (eg number of donors, average amount given, how many donors were in Ireland). An organisation disclosing anything more detailed would, I believe, get hammered for data protection breaches.

Not for any donation above €100 from what I can gather from the SIPO web-site

SIPO wrote:

A recipient of a donation may not accept:

• a donation exceeding the value of €100, if the name and address of the donor are not known;

• a cash donation exceeding the value of €200;

• a donation exceeding the value of €200 in any calendar year from a corporate donor unless the corporate donor is registered in the register of Corporate Donors maintained by the Standards Commission and a statement, on behalf of the corporate donor confirming that the making of the donation was approved by the corporate donor, is furnished with the donation to the donee;

• a donation, of whatever value, from an individual (other than an Irish citizen) who resides outside the island of Ireland;

• a donation from a body corporate or unincorporated body of persons which does not keep an office in the island of Ireland from which one or more of its principal activities is directed;

• a donation, or donations from the same donor, in any calendar year exceeding, in the case of a TD, Senator, MEP, candidate at a Dáil, Seanad or European election or Presidential candidate/election agent, an aggregate value of €1,000 or, in the case of a political party, sub-unit of a political party or a third party, an aggregate value of €2,500.

It could be that Iona gleaned €273k on the back of a large number of very small donations with no single donation over €2.5k. It could also be they've yet to have their accounts checked by SIPO seeing as they only registered in 2015 themselves.

Nick Park

smacl wrote: »

Not for any donation above €100 from what I can gather from the SIPO web-site




It could be that Iona gleaned €273k on the back of a large number of very small donations with no single donation over €2.5k. It could also be they've yet to have their accounts checked by SIPO seeing as they only registered in 2015 themselves.

No, the €100 limit simply applies to receiving anonymous donations. It has nothing to do with divulging information about donors.

Many organisations, particularly charities, keep a list of all donors. But to be 'transparent' in the sense of naming all donors, would be a breach of data protection law.

recedite

The kind of donations we are talking about here are ones collected for political purposes (lobbying or attempting to influence public policy).
Most charities would not be affected.
Even if they were, disclosing names to SIPO would not be a breach of data protection because the charity "should" have a policy to let donors of notifiable amounts know in advance that SIPO would be notified.

Nick Park

recedite wrote: »

The kind of donations we are talking about here are ones collected for political purposes (lobbying or attempting to influence public policy).

That might be what you are talking about. But I was responding to a post in which smacl wanted Iona to be "fully transparent as to where all and any donations come from".

I was pointing out that such 'transparency' would be illegal under data protection legislation.

disclosing names to SIPO would not be a breach of data protection because the charity "should" have a policy to let donors of notifiable amounts know in advance that SIPO would be notified.

I agree, but that isn't actually what we were talking about. We were talking about Iona being 'transparent' about "all and any donations".

smacl

Nick Park wrote: »

No, the €100 limit simply applies to receiving anonymous donations. It has nothing to do with divulging information about donors.

Many organisations, particularly charities, keep a list of all donors. But to be 'transparent' in the sense of naming all donors, would be a breach of data protection law.

The €200 limit per annum is a bit more interesting though. By my reading, if exceeded it requires the donor also to register with SIPO, where there details become publicly available. See SIPO register of corporate donors. Surprisingly, it contains just 38 entries at present which seems tiny when we're talking about the total number of individuals or organisations liable to contribute > €200 to a single political cause in a given year.

smacl

Nick Park wrote: »

Many organisations, particularly charities, keep a list of all donors. But to be 'transparent' in the sense of naming all donors, would be a breach of data protection law.

It doesn't seem unreasonable (to me) that any person or organisation donating towards political lobbying be obliged to make themselves known. According to SIPO rules, as per my previous post, they already do if the amount donated in any given year to any organisation exceeds €200. Given there are only 38 such listed donors on the SIPO website, and the largest total anyone of them could have ligitimately donated to a 3rd party organisation is €2500 this means that less than €95,000 in total of legitimate political donation was made last year. This seems like a ridiculously small figure which to me suggests that compliance with SIPO is currently the exception in Ireland rather than the rule.

Nick Park

smacl wrote: »

It doesn't seem unreasonable (to me) that any person or organisation donating towards political lobbying be obliged to make themselves known. According to SIPO rules, as per my previous post, they already do if the amount donated in any given year to any organisation exceeds €200. Given there are only 38 such listed donors on the SIPO website, and the largest total anyone of them could have ligitimately donated to a 3rd party organisation is €2500 this means that less than €95,000 in total of legitimate political donation was made last year. This seems like a ridiculously small figure which to me suggests that compliance with SIPO is currently the exception in Ireland rather than the rule.

I'm not quite sure why you keep quoting me when you aren't responding to my point.

I addressed your comment that Iona should be 'transparent' in disclosing "any and all donations" not just donations towards political lobbying.

smacl

Peregrinus wrote: »

I think there's two ways you could approach this.

One is to treat fixed costs - the staff, the premises, the power bill - as not being attributable to any particular activity; they're just a foundation that needs to be constructed before any activity at all can be undertaken. On this basis the organisation's "political expenditure" is the extra money that they spend, that they wouldn't have spent if they hadn't taken on a particular political project. So, any extra printing, advertising, etc, undertaken specifically in connection with this process. Any extra staff hired to work on this project, or the staff costs of existing staff diverted to work on this project.

I think this would fall foul of SIPO's definition of what constitutes a donation, where provision of existing resources in terms of labour, premises, facilities, power etc.. would be equivalent to benefit in kind. From the notes for corporate donors on what constitutes a donation;

SIPO wrote:

viii. a notional donation/donation in kind. This means that where a person/organisation pays for work/expenses from its own resources (i.e., not party funds) then this is considered a donation of the notional value/cost of the work/expenses to the donee. Donations in kind or notional donations are to be valued at the usual commercial price charged for the purchase, use or acquisition of the property or goods the supply of any service donated. See paragraph 3.2(v).

While I appreciate the sentiment of what SIPO are trying to achieve here, it seems a bit sketchy in how you would implement it. For example, if a priest were to recommend how parishioners should vote in a referendum, the priest is engaged in a political activity and the church is donating resources towards this activity. The same could hold true for many people and many activities.

smacl

Nick Park wrote: »

I addressed your comment that Iona should be 'transparent' in disclosing "any and all donations" not just donations towards political lobbying.

My bad, I should have included 'towards political lobbying' though having had a quick scan of their news page, there's very little that could be described as apolitical on it.

Peregrinus

smacl wrote: »

I think this would fall foul of SIPO's definition of what constitutes a donation, where provision of existing resources in terms of labour, premises, facilities, power etc.. would be equivalent to benefit in kind. From the notes for corporate donors on what constitutes a donation;

Oh, sure. Expenditure-in-kind has to be accounted for as well as expenditure-in-cash. The question is not whether you count the expenditure, but whether you treat it as political expenditure.

smacl wrote: »

While I appreciate the sentiment of what SIPO are trying to achieve here, it seems a bit sketchy in how you would implement it. For example, if a priest were to recommend how parishioners should vote in a referendum, the priest is engaged in a political activity and the church is donating resources towards this activity. The same could hold true for many people and many activities.

But in that particular example the donation of resources by the church is trivial, isn't it? Suppose the priest mentions this three times in homilies the Sunday before the vote. That's 15 minutes of the priest's time. Assuming we treat priests as working a 40 hour week, that equates to about one-eight-thousandth of his annual remuneration, which I'd guess would be somewhere between three and five euros.

And even this assumes that the church knows that he has done this. If the diocese has directed him to preach in this way, obviously they know it and it represents a contribution-in-kind by them. But if he has simply taken it on himself to do this, the diocese will likely only hear about it if somebody complains about it. It's questionable whether that could be regarded as a contribution by the diocese, but it's even more questionable whether a reporting obligation that aimed to cover it would be workable in practice.

We live in a democracy where citizens are free, and indeed encouraged, to participate in public affairs, including by commenting on them, by urging particular courses of action, etc. I don't think SIPO can or should be directed at monitoring or limiting this. What it should be aimed at is the potential hijacking or corruption of public affairs by special interest groups.

Obviously there's a blurry line between (a) organised campaigns by lobby groups which aim to buy influence (bad) and (b) citizens working together to advance their views on public affairs (good). I think what SIPO should be aimed at is transparency so that we can make a judgment as to whether a particular effort is an example of (a) or (b).

I'd have to say that an organisation, whether a church or not, whose efforts centre around getting people to make public appeals for a vote this way or that pretty clearly falls into the (b) camp as far as I am concerned, and I am not at all worried by it. I do not see any great merit in attempting to put a monetary value on the time which the people concerned devote to this activity; the fact that they are engaged in the activity is already entirely public. (That's rather the point, in fact.)

Whereas an organisation that makes large donations to political parties and expects in return regular opportunities for a quiet word in the Minister's shell-like ear is very much on the (a) side of the balance. That seems to me the kind of degradation of democracy which SIPO structures should primarily be directed towards.

smacl

Peregrinus wrote: »

But in that particular example the donation of resources by the church is trivial, isn't it? Suppose the priest mentions this three times in homilies the Sunday before the vote. That's 15 minutes of the priest's time. Assuming we treat priests as working a 40 hour week, that equates to about one-eight-thousandth of his annual remuneration, which I'd guess would be somewhere between three and five euros.

I think that's one eight-hundredth, not one eight-thousandth, that the costs of running a small church are more than the wage of priest, and that if you consider the Catholic Church in Ireland as a single organisation the amount isn't trivial. That said, thinking on it further, it was a flawed example on my part as the congregation are also members the church attending a church meeting, so it is doubtful whether it could be considered akin to lobbying the public. If the church were involved say in the publication and distribution of pro-life material to the general public for example, that would be a different matter, but I don't think this is the case for the RCC.

We live in a democracy where citizens are free, and indeed encouraged, to participate in public affairs, including by commenting on them, by urging particular courses of action, etc. I don't think SIPO can or should be directed at monitoring or limiting this. What it should be aimed at is the potential hijacking or corruption of public affairs by special interest groups.

Obviously there's a blurry line between (a) organised campaigns by lobby groups which aim to buy influence (bad) and (b) citizens working together to advance their views on public affairs (good). I think what SIPO should be aimed at is transparency so that we can make a judgment as to whether a particular effort is an example of (a) or (b).

I'd have to say that an organisation, whether a church or not, whose efforts centre around getting people to make public appeals for a vote this way or that pretty clearly falls into the (b) camp as far as I am concerned, and I am not at all worried by it. I do not see any great merit in attempting to put a monetary value on the time which the people concerned devote to this activity; the fact that they are engaged in the activity is already entirely public. (That's rather the point, in fact.)

Whereas an organisation that makes large donations to political parties and expects in return regular opportunities for a quiet word in the Minister's shell-like ear is very much on the (a) side of the balance. That seems to me the kind of degradation of democracy which SIPO structures should primarily be directed towards.

I agree entirely, but that is making a subjective interpretation on how SIPO should ideally operate as opposed to adhering strictly to the written rules it currently provides. I reckon these rules are primarily there as tools that SIPO can use to chase organisation trying to evade its control. Given SIPO has a current list of just 38 corporate donors, none of whom are allowed donate €2,500 per annum to any given organisation, I would imagine the vast majority of donations towards political lobbying, whether in cash or in kind, fall well outside of SIPO's rules. Were Amnesty become the whipping boy that SIPO use to show they've teeth, that'd be all well and good in my opinion, just so long as they similarly pursue others involved in lobbying. Given they manged to spend in excess of €300,000 uncovering a €2000 false expense claim I'm of the opinion that SIPO are yet another government quango sucking up public funds for no great public benefit.

Peregrinus

Nearly all law enforcement processes cost more than the monetary value that can be attributed to the breach of the law being enforced. If, on that basis, SIPO are "yet another government quango sucking up public funds for no great public benefit" then so are the guards, the court service, the probation service and the prisons.

I don't think this is a particularly useful way of trying to measure the public utility of SIPO.

smacl

Peregrinus wrote: »

Nearly all law enforcement processes cost more than the monetary value that can be attributed to the breach of the law being enforced. If, on that basis, SIPO are "yet another government quango sucking up public funds for no great public benefit" then so are the guards, the court service, the probation service and the prisons.

I don't think this is a particularly useful way of trying to measure the public utility of SIPO.

Were that is the case, how exactly do we measure the public utility of SIPO? While I appreciate monitoring political donations is only one part of what they do, given they have just 38 registered corporate donors giving €200 or more for political purposes they would appear to be ignored by most such donors. Unless you contend that the total amount donated by all organisations and individuals in the state towards political causes amounts to less than €95,000 and no other single donation of more that €2,500 has been made.

Spending €300,000 to track down a €2,000 expenses fiddle does to me seem to be a spectacular waste of public money at a time where there is dire need of such money elsewhere in society. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

Peregrinus

Only if you assume that the only outcome of tracking down the fiddle is that the fiddle has been tracked down. If you allow also the possibility that tracking down the fiddle might deter or avoid further fiddles by the same or other people, then the calculation changes.

smacl

Peregrinus wrote: »

Only if you assume that the only outcome of tracking down the fiddle is that the fiddle has been tracked down. If you allow also the possibility that tracking down the fiddle might deter or avoid further fiddles by the same or other people, then the calculation changes.

The outcome from what I can tell is that Ó Domhnaill resigned Fianna Fáil but remains in the Seanad at our service (and expense). Thick skinned animals that our politicians are, I doubt this will have many would be fiddlers trembling in their boots.

recedite

smacl wrote: »

Given there are only 38 such listed donors on the SIPO website, and the largest total anyone of them could have ligitimately donated to a 3rd party organisation is €2500 this means that less than €95,000 in total of legitimate political donation was made last year. This seems like a ridiculously small figure which to me suggests that compliance with SIPO is currently the exception in Ireland rather than the rule.

Fair play to you for doing this calculation, but on what basis do you maintain the €95K is ridiculously small? Unless you know the total expenditure of the orgs in question, and also the total of their other income, you can't say that there is a shortfall in accountability here.

smacl wrote: »

Were Amnesty become the whipping boy that SIPO use to show they've teeth, that'd be all well and good in my opinion, just so long as they similarly pursue others involved in lobbying. Given they manged to spend in excess of €300,000 uncovering a €2000 false expense claim I'm of the opinion that SIPO are yet another government quango sucking up public funds for no great public benefit.

Its nonsense to claim Amnesty are "the whipping boy" here. They have chosen to openly flout the law, that's why they are under the spotlight. Plain and simple.

As for that FF senator, he deliberately inflated the cost of the SIPO action by demanding to have the entire process conducted as gaeilge (which was probably very lucrative for some of his buddies) You can't blame SIPO for that, nor can you blame them if the penalties imposed on the senator at the end of the process were inadequate.

Anyway the cost of enforcing standards is always much greater than the benefit from stopping any one offender. How much do you think it costs to summon an unpaid parking ticket offender to court ?
The benefit is in mainly in preventing other people from ignoring the laws in future.

smacl

recedite wrote: »

Fair play to you for doing this calculation, but on what basis do you maintain the €95K is ridiculously small? Unless you know the total expenditure of the orgs in question, and also the total of their other income, you can't say that there is a shortfall in accountability here.

That is the maximum possible amount assuming all 38 registered donors donated the maximum allowable €2,500 and all donations went exclusively to third party organisations. The donors listed also include those donating to political parties, where the maximum donation in that case is much smaller. While we don't have a breakdown available to the public, at a guess the actual figure that relates to third party organisations is a small fraction of that €95k. Given we have the likes of Iona spending €273k as a single lobbying organisation, it seems reasonable to assume the sum total spent by all such lobbying groups is a multiple of this figure. If you felt that way inclined you could check this by looking at the publicly available abbreviated balance sheets at the companies office for the organisations in question. I'd be surprised if it didn't run into the millions. Were this the case, donations registered with SIPO would amount to less than 1% of monies spent on political lobbying. So where exactly is the money coming from, if not through SIPO registered donations?

Edit: As for the FF expense fiddler, it seems like an awful shame that SIPO didn't pursue costs once he decided to take them to the high court.

recedite

smacl wrote: »

Were this the case, donations registered with SIPO would amount to less than 1% of monies spent on political lobbying. So where exactly is the money coming from, if not through SIPO registered donations?

The assumption is "from multiple small donations".
If it turned out that Iona has hidden backers, being the RCC or it's direct affiliates who were making large undisclosed donations, then that would put them in a similar position to Equality Ireland with the Humanist Association €10K, or to Amnesty with the George Soros €137K.
So yes, as a limited company, Lolek should make certain financial info available, and if that is suspicious then anyone can make a complaint to SIPO.

smacl

recedite wrote: »

The assumption is "from multiple small donations".
If it turned out that Iona has hidden backers, being the RCC or it's direct affiliates who were making large undisclosed donations, then that would put them in a similar position to Equality Ireland with the Humanist Association €10K, or to Amnesty with the George Soros €137K.
So yes, as a limited company, Lolek should make certain financial info available, and if that is suspicious then anyone can make a complaint to SIPO.

Multiple small backers, none of whom contribute more than €200 in any given calendar year? Of course it is possible, but we can't tell either way. Lolek is under no obligation to make any information available to the public beyond an abbreviated balance sheet and they choose not to. As such, it would be up to SIPO to proactively investigate, as neither you nor I have grounds for a complaint beyond simple suspicions. I wonder whether SIPO have either the ability, the budget or the appetite for this, given the extraordinary resources they've consumed on a 2k expenses fiddle.

Nick Park

smacl wrote: »

Multiple small backers, none of whom contribute more than €200 in any given calendar year?

No, simply a lack of backers who gave in excess of €200 in any given calendar year for the express purpose of supporting political activity.

I wonder whether SIPO have either the ability, the budget or the appetite for this, given the extraordinary resources they've consumed on a 2k expenses fiddle.

I believe they expected costs to be awarded, so would not be out of pocket to the extent you suggest.