Sinn Féin queried over funding

Bill Breathnach has written an article highlighting a bit of a mystery regarding a £24,000 donation to Sinn Féin from the Republican newspaper ‘An Phoblacht’,

‘Records from the UK Electoral Commission show that Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland received £24,089 from the publication in July of 2023. At the time, this was worth €28,868, however accounts show that the publication’s entire financial holdings never exceeded €25,321 in 2023. Although affiliated with Sinn Fein, An Phoblacht is owned by Parnell Publications, a private company with an address at 58 Parnell Square, Dublin. The donation was attributed to it. Electoral laws in the Republic prohibit parties from accepting donations of more than €2,500 from any single company in a calendar year. However, there is no such limit on donations received in Northern Ireland.’

The article also points out how Sinn Féin has fallen under the scrutiny of SIPO (Standards in Public Office) over their reported expenditures during the local elections…

“The party said it spent just over €7,500 in its campaign, compared to declared expenditures of €206,000 and €290,000 for Fine Gael and Fianna Fail respectively. A SIPO official reportedly told Sinn Fein that they had incurred “a disproportionately low level of expenditure” compared to the other large parties. Sinn Fein later stated that it had “sought advice” from SIPO as to “whether our declared election expenditure has been allocated correctly.”

Funding is currently in the news right now in British politics due to the possibility Elon Musk may fund Reform UK through his UK subsidiaries. The Labour government is currently resisting calls to tighten legislation fearing that it would be presented by Farage as another establishment stitch-up. Instead a government source said

“We’ll beat Reform by defeating their arguments rather than changing the rules to stop them getting money from Elon Musk,” said a source. “You don’t successfully take on populists by changing the rules in bid to thwart them.”

While the Labour government goes off to do battle with Reform UK with a chocolate sword, it does raise the prospect that if that approach proves ineffective (perish the thought that truth would struggle against a flood of cold, hard cash) that legislation regarding funding maybe tightened over the course of this parliament. What impact could that have on Sinn Féin’s finances given the party’s non-standard approach to fund-raising?

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