Greg Daly
Government involvement in the Amnesty repeal launch glosses over the organisation’s flouting of Irish law, writes Greg Daly
Amnesty International Ireland may have fallen foul of the State’s ethics watchdog, but that hasn’t stopped Health Minister Simon Harris from endorsing the organisation in its campaign to remove Ireland’s constitutional protections for the unborn.
Such, at least, was the unavoidable message of his involvement last week in the launch of Amnesty’s ‘It’s time to talk’ campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.
Amnesty, of course, has been in dispute with the State since November when the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO) directed it to repay a €137,000 donation from the US-based Open Society Foundation, funded by the Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.
Political purposes
Irish electoral law forbids ‘third parties’ from receiving donations for political purposes from foreign individuals and organisations, with SIPO holding that ‘political purposes’ includes the running of campaigns intended to promote particular outcomes with regard to Government policies or functions.
Despite this, Amnesty’s executive director Colm O’Gorman has said Amnesty would not be complying with SIPO’s instruction that it return the foreign funding; it is currently bringing a judicial review against SIPO, the State and the Attorney General.
However, at the ‘It’s time to talk’ launch Mr O’Gorman explicitly stated that while foreign funding is not being used in the current referendum campaign targeting the electorate, it had indeed been used in a campaign to persuade the Government to work towards changing Irish law.
“It relates to a campaign that was targeted at Government to secure a commitment to changing Irish law on abortion,” he told the Irish Times. “It was seeking to change Government’s thinking on the whole issue of reproductive rights.”
All of which throws a very strange light on how Minister Harris joined independent senator Lynn Ruane in campaigning alongside Mr O’Gorman on Dublin’s Moore Street on April 10, proudly displaying Amnesty materials as though the organisation wasn’t currently defying Irish law and the State’s ethics watchdog, or challenging the State in the courts.
Following criticism by the Pro Life Campaign last week, a Fine Gael spokesperson said Minister Harris supports a campaign encouraging people to have a conversation about voting ‘yes’, and said Amnesty had assured the minister it would be complying with SIPO rules and regulations during the referendum campaign.
This assurance is, however, clearly false: Amnesty has been refusing to comply with SIPO’s instructions for some months, and continues to do so.
Further, when asked by The Irish Catholic in what sense Minister Harris understood this assurance from an organisation that is publicly refusing to comply with the State’s ethics watchdog, a Fine Gael spokesperson refused to answer this question and simply reiterated: “The Minister has been assured by Amnesty that they are registered with SIPO for the referendum campaign and will fully comply with the rules and regulations.”
Acceptable
Asked why the minister believes it is acceptable for him to campaign alongside an organisation that is currently defying SIPO regulations and Irish law, the spokesperson similarly reiterated an answer previously given: “The issue in relation to the Open Society Foundations donation is a matter that is currently before the courts so the Minister is precluded from commenting.”
This is nonsense. The head of Amnesty International Ireland has admitted that the organisation took and used foreign funding with the intention of procuring a Government commitment to changing Irish law, publicly stating this at a launch in which the Government minister responsible for changing the relevant law took part.
Minister Harris may claim that he is precluded from commenting on issues surrounding the OSF donation, but this simply doesn’t wash: actions speak louder than words.
Whatever his intentions may be, the minister’s presence alongside Mr O’Gorman at the Amnesty launch speaks eloquently about where he stands.