Sinn Féin received €439,051 in UK State funding last year, according to the party’s published Statement of Accounts.
It is unclear whether the funding is ringfenced for use by the party’s northern organisation, or whether the money is accessible in the Republic, as Sinn Féin’s press office failed to response to Gript queries by the time of publication.
The funding, listed under “miscellaneous income” for 2024, is likely derived from the party’s Northern organisation, which is eligible for ‘representative money’, even though Sinn Fein has an abstentionist policy as a part of which its MPs refuse to take their seats in the British Parliament.
It received approximately £209,122 in representative money for the 2024–2025 financial year.
For the financial year 2023 – 2024, Sinn Féin received representative money support from the UK to the tune of £193,680.02.
Sinn Féin is additionally eligible for the Financial Assistance for Political Parties (FAPP) scheme, under which it received a total of £166,152.67 for the period 2023 – 2024, the latest period for which figures are available.
Taken together, UK State funding received under those schemes comes to about £359,832.69, or €414,966.25 by today’s exchange rate.
Asked by Gript to clarify whether Sinn Féin maintains separate accounts for its operations in the Republic and its operations in Northern Ireland, the party failed to provide comment by the time of publication.
Queries related to whether the €439,051 of UK State funding received is ringfenced for the party’s activities in the North, and if not, how it’s made use of in the Republic also went unanswered.
In 2019, when Sinn Féin was bequeathed around €4 million from the estate of Englishman William Hampton, who left the party the money in his will, Sinn Féin spokespeople argued that British electoral law applied and that as such, it wasn’t bound by limits set in the Republic on political donations.