Sinn Féin-linked companies in Dublin donated €185,000 to party in Northern Ireland

Two Dublin-based companies controlled by Sinn Féin donated around €185,000 to the party in Northern Ireland last year, resulting in substantial losses for the firms, according to newly filed accounts.

Political parties in the Republic of Ireland are prohibited from receiving more than €2,000 from a single corporate donor in a calendar year, but no such restrictions apply in the North.

Sinn Féin regularly transfers funds between its organisations in Northern Ireland and the Republic.

The disparity between the donation rules in the two jurisdictions has allowed the party to accept large bequests from deceased supporters in the past, including £2.9 million from the estate of William Hampton following his death in 2018.

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Accounts for Republican Merchandising Limited – the company behind the Sinn Féin Bookshop website – show that “other expenses” increased by €170,570 during 2023.

The firm donated £129,089 to the party in Northern Ireland during the same period, according to the UK Electoral Commission. It donated another £52,398 in July of this year.

After making the donation, Republican Merchandising Limited recorded a loss of €92,650 for 2023, despite turnover increasing by nearly 22 percent to €288,300 that year. It had made a profit of €34,536 in 2022.

Parnell Publications Limited – the company behind An Phoblacht newspaper – reported a €24,063 increase in “other expenses” last year, leaving the firm with no current assets and resulting in a loss of €25,321 for 2023.

It donated a total of £24,089 to Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland during the same period. Both companies are based at 58 Parnell Square in Dublin – a property owned by Sinn Féin, according to the party’s accounts.

It reported no donations to the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO) in respect of last year. The party reported expenditure of just over €7,500 on the local elections earlier this year – a fraction of the €290,000 and €206,000 spent by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, respectively.

This was queried by Dublin City Council, but Sinn Féin said its election spending statement was a “true and accurate record of our national spend”.

The party was contacted on a number of occasions regarding the accounts filed by Republican Merchandising Limited and Parnell Publications Limited, but did not provide any comment.

Items currently for sale on the Sinn Féin Bookshop website include a T-shirt with the slogan “Tiocfaidh ár lá”, and a badge showing a silhouette of armed militants in the back of a lorry featuring the Irish flag and the words “Irish Republican Army”.

Limited edition portraits of the late Martin McGuinness by artist Robert Ballagh are for sale on the website for €600. A total of 500 of the signed prints were produced in 2017.

Some of the more controversial items that were removed from sale in 2018 included T-shirts emblazoned with the slogans “Sniper at work”, and “IRA: Undefeated Army”.

The sale of IRA merchandise was previously defended by former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, who said in 2003 that there were people who saw the organisation as “freedom fighters, as people who suffered greatly, as people who had members killed on active service”.

“There is memorabilia which, in my view, deals with those who see the IRA in that context. You have to get some sense of proportion about all this,” he said.

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