The Green Party is insisting that the government ban corporate donations to political parties. This demand was accepted by Fianna Fáil in the Renewed Programme for Government, negotiated last year. Commenting on this last July, Paul Gogarty TD said that the party would gladly ‘go to the country’ if Fianna Fáil doesn’t bring this forward.
Corporate donations are money paid by companies to politicians, usually around election time. The largest corporate donors have, in the recent past, been property developers.
Although companies rarely say outright that they want something in return for their money (that would be illegal), politicians are not charities and companies do not give away money for no reason at all.
Companies cannot have more rights than the people the politicians are elected and well paid to represent.
