Well, they get €700,000 a year from the Irish taxpayer for starters:
Sinn Féin receives direct funding of almost €1m a year from the British and Irish governments, by far the party's largest source of funding.
Unusually among political parties, Sinn Féin is in an extremely healthy financial position, according to unpublished accounts seen by The Sunday Business Post.
As the party faces accusations of complicity in the stg£26.5 million Northern Bank robbery in Belfast, activists can reasonably protest that they don't have to rob banks - they have enough money already.
The party has total reserves of €2.3 million, which includes more than €400,000 cash in the bank. It recorded a surplus - a profit - of more than €270,000 in 2003, the last year for which the party has compiled figures.
Exchequer funding from the Republic and the North is the major contributor to the party's finances. In a year when it cost €1.7 million to run the central party organisation north and south, Sinn Féin received almost €1 million in direct funding from the British and Irish governments.
It got a further €580,000 in contributions from its elected representatives - out of salaries paid from the public purse.
The party received about stg»150,000 (€213,000) in direct funding from the Northern exchequer in 2003.
In Dublin, the party receives government funding under two schemes - the Electoral Acts and the party leaders' allowance.
In 2003, the party received almost €700,000 in total from the Irish government.
A substantial funding source for the party is the salaries of its public representatives, which are paid into the party funds. Representatives are then paid an allowance by the party - amounting to the average industrial wage, according to a spokesman - although they can keep their expenses.
In 2003, Sinn Féin's Belfast office received stg£333,000 (almost €470,000) in contributions from its Assembly members, according to its Northern accounts. In the same year, the Dublin office received more than €100,000 from the party's elected representatives.
Sinn Féin received good news recently when the British government decided to extend Northern Ireland's exemption from a ban on foreign political donations for a further two years.
The party receives hundreds of thousands of euro in foreign donations every year, principally from the US and Australia.
Foreign political donations are banned in the Republic and Britain, but the North is exempt from the legislation. John Spellar, the Northern Ireland minister, recently wrote to Sinn Féin to inform the party that the exemption would be extended for at least another two years.
Sinn Féin insists that it does not spend any money it raises abroad in the Republic, as this would be in breach of the law. However, it is free to use the money in the North.
The Standards in Public Office Commission - which polices the political process and to which annual declarations must be made by all parties - says that it accepts the declarations made by all parties at face value. It has never had cause to audit any party, a spokesman said last week.
Sinn Féin received a second boost when the Attorney General agreed with its view that the Standards in Public Office Commission could only police the 26-county part of the organisation.
Although it is run as a single 32-county organisation, the party produces three sets of audited accounts - for the 32 counties, for the six counties and for the 26 counties.
All sets of the 2003 accounts have been seen by The Sunday Business Post. However, the accounts only relate to the central party organisation.
Local units of the party are free to pursue their own fundraising and to spend such funds locally.
Political opponents of Sinn Féin, who frequently - and without evidence - accuse Sinn Féin of being funded from the proceeds of IRA criminality, point out that, were the party to receive illicit funds, the money would be spent locally. It would hardly show up in the accounts.
In response, the party says that the accounts are open to inspection by the Revenue Commissioners and by the Standards in Public Office Commission. And Sinn Féin reveals a good deal more about its finances than many of its rivals.
Nevertheless, examination of the Sinn Féin accounts and comparison between the different versions reveals some anomalies.
For instance, the 32-county accounts show an entry for ‘admin expenses 6 counties' in the amount of €50,000. However, in the six-county accounts, the entry for ‘admin expenses' is stg£90,000 - or €126,000.
Comparison between ‘donations' declared north and south shows about €27,000 unaccounted for. The 32-county figure is €464,000; the six-county figure is €334,000 (stg£240,000), yet the donations the party has declared to the Standards Commission in Dublin amount to €103,000.
However, the accounts are straightforward in the main, and show that the party's greatest strength is its ethic of voluntarism - it costs very little to run.
Wages and salaries cost just €550,000 in 2003, because, the party says, it pays its employees €500 per week.
By comparison, in 2002, the last year for which figures are available, the Labour Party spent €900,000 on wages and salaries.
Fine Gael, which produces three-year consolidated accounts, spent more than €2.5 million on salaries, plus another €2.2 million staffing the leader's office and the press office - or almost €1.6 million a year.
Sinn Féin's political opponents murmur about under-the-table payments, but there is no evidence to back this up.
Party officials and representatives show no evidence that they live anything other than relatively frugal lifestyles.
Opponents say that Sinn Féin is consistently better funded than other parties and that, no matter how rigorous any audit is, a party that supported a campaign of violence, some of whose members were convicted of crimes including murder, would hardly be likely to baulk at violating campaign finance laws.
“We're a party with a core of voluntarism,” said Sinn Féin finance director Des Mackin. “We don't have to pay anyone to put up posters. We don't have to pay people to do anything.”
COMMENT: Does anyone else find it ironic that a political organisation which has been described as 'less than 100% committed to democracy' should be funded so heavily by the democratically elected governments of 2 countries?
Also, in the event of a united Ireland they'll be €230,000 a year worse off.
