Friends of the Earth seeks clarity around donations to political parties

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/oct/31/political-donations-northern-ireland-queried

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Friends of the Earth has launched a campaign to shine light into the hidden world of political donations in Northern Ireland.

The political parties represented in the Stormont assembly are the only ones in either the UK or the island of Ireland allowed to keep the names of their financial donors secret.

The environmental campaign group claims the secrecy surrounding all the parties and their donors including wealthy business figures may have led to "some bizarre decisions" in the area of planning and development.

Theresa Villiers, the Northern Ireland secretary, has the power to bring the province's political funding system into line with the rest of the UK where all donations to parties have to be made public.

A similar transparency regime exists in the Irish Republic, whose political system has been tainted with revelations about politicians and their corrupt relationships with builders and speculators.

James Orr, from the Northern Ireland branch of Friends of the Earth, said it believed that further planning powers to local councils should be frozen until everyone can "see who are the main party funders".

Orr said that since some power was devolved from Westminster to Stormont following the 2006 St Andrews agreement, the local environment had been "paying a heavy price for the lack of healthy democracy".

He said: "For example, there is totally inadequate enforcement especially for quarries and mineral developments, over the years out-of-town shopping developments have been the norm and new roads seem to be built for political reasons instead of meeting transport needs."

Asked if Friends of the Earth believed there was a cosy relationship between developers and certain political parties, Orr said: "We simply don't know and this is the issue. Because we do not know a lack of trust emerges between citizens and government."

He pointed out that already more than 4,000 Northern Irish citizens had signed a petition to eradicate secrecy as part Friends of the Earth's Who Pulls the Strings campaign.

In the past the parties, particularly within unionism, have argued that publishing the names of financial backers could result in them being targeted by republican paramilitaries.

Orr, however, said such concerns were no longer relevant now Northern Ireland was enjoying relative peace.

"We feel that the reasons given for refusing transparency are illogical and unsubstantiated. On the face of it politics is now very open in Northern Ireland – party conferences are on TV, constituency offices of parties are open to the public and the names of electoral agents are in the public domain. Yet the parties want to maintain secrecy with regard to protecting private or corporate interests," he added.

One of the world's leading experts on party political funding backed the Friends of the Earth campaign and also called on the British government to outlaw donations from foreign supporters to parties in Northern Ireland. Unionist and nationalist parties in the province are allowed to raise finance from backers abroad – a practice now outlawed in the rest of the UK.

Ian McMenamin, from Dublin City University, who has studied business donations to parties in Australia, Germany, the UK and Canada, said the only other countries to hide the names of political donors were in Switzerland and Sweden.

"It is unusual because in most democracies now there is some transparency about who funds political parties. There is also a strong norm about banning money to parties from foreign sources.

"One idea with both the peace process in mind and the need for transparency would be to say that what happened in the past with party donations should be left there. However from now on they should take on the British system, which is now really transparent," McMenamin said.

The last Life and Times survey of public opinion regarding perceptions of Northern Ireland's parties and their relationships with wealth donors was published in 2011 by Queen's University Belfast. It found that 77% of the public thought planning decisions were influenced by donors and 80% believed local politicians did favours for their donors.