Organisations ordered to return overseas donations

Amnesty said it will not return the money and that having told the commission of its intentions, the watchdog replied in October 2016 “stating that it accepted our statement that Amnesty International was not then required to register with the commission as a third party”.

While not directly citing Amnesty’s case, the commission yesterday issued a statement in response to “a number of recent stories published regarding the commission’s administration of the Electoral Act”.

“In 2016, the commission received information that several Irish organisations had received donations from a foreign donor,” it said. “At the time, the commission made inquiries and received assurances from the recipients that the donations were not for political purposes.

“However, the commission recently received new information that indicated the donations were indeed for political purposes.

“The commission sought and received written confirmation from the donor that the funding was for explicitly political purposes.

“As it is the intent of the donor that determines whether a donation is a political donation, the funding very clearly fell within the act’s prohibitions.”

Amnesty Ireland said it told the commission of the grant in September 2016, and that it was “to fund our work advocating for Ireland to bring its law on abortion into compliance with international human rights law and standards”.

“We have not seen OSF’s correspondence with SIPOC, so do not know what SIPOC asked OSF, or what OSF may or may not have told SIPOC,” it said.

“In 2016, we supplied SIPOC with all the objectives and activities for which we sought this OSF grant.

“This was very detailed information about the purpose for which we sought the grant. OSF simply approved this application, and has never instructed us how to use this grant in any way.”