Greg Daly
George Soros A group campaigning for the abolition of Ireland’s constitutional protections for the unborn returned a grant of $24,999 to the US-based Open Societies Foundation after being directed to do so by the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO), The Irish Catholic has learned.
According to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, the Abortion Rights Campaign (ARC) returned the grant, originally worth almost €23,000, maintaining it was doing so “without prejudice” to the findings of the commission, which it rejected.
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The group received the grant in January 2016 after submitting an application to fund a project directed towards, among other things, the “strategic goal of garnering support for repeal of the Eighth Amendment of the Irish Constitution”.
Documents leaked last August claimed that OSF, which is bankrolled by billionaire investor George Soros, intended to challenge Ireland’s constitutional protections for the unborn by funding the Abortion Rights Campaign, Amnesty International Ireland, and the Irish Family Planning Association to work collectively on a campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland.
Despite this, when SIPO asked ARC last August to submit copies of correspondence with the US-based foundation, including its funding application, it said funding received from the US had not been used for political purposes and was exempt from SIPO oversight.
Claiming that SIPO’s approach was “draconian” and impinged their right to freedom of association, the group only furnished the watchdog with the requested documentation after SIPO’s head of Ethics and Lobbying Regulation, Sherry Perreault, informed them that if this did not happen they would refer the matter to An Garda Síochána.
SIPO subsequently informed the group that their application showed that as they had sought overseas funding for a campaign with a domestic political purpose, they were in breach of the law, and that An Garda Síochána would have to be informed if the donation were not returned. While rejecting this verdict, the group returned the donation in November. Faced with similar requests from SIPO last Autumn, the Irish Family Planning Association said it was not a campaigning body and had used the €132,000 it had received for charitable and educational purposes; the commission did not pursue the matter further.
Amnesty International Ireland, meanwhile, said the €137,000 it received was used to campaign for Ireland to “bring its law on abortion into compliance with international human rights law and standards”. Amnesty Ireland’s executive director Colm O’Gorman said Amnesty does not generally consider itself to come under SIPO’s jurisdiction as work for the “protection and promotion of human rights as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments” does not constitute work for “political purposes”.
This claim was, however, rejected by the Pro Life Campaign, with spokesperson Cora Sherlock accusing Amnesty of “hiding behind ‘human rights’ language instead of openly accepting that they are running a highly political campaign to dismantle the Eighth Amendment”.