Sinn Féin’s US fundraising arm, Friends of Sinn Féin, has raised a further €366,000 in donations, mostly from donors in the New York area building sector, new filings to the US Department of Justice show.
The Irish party’s US political arm is required to disclose its activities and fundraising under the US Foreign Agents Registration Act as an agent of Sinn Féin and lodges filings every six months.
The latest filing, for the six-month reporting period to the end of October, shows that Friends of Sinn Féin raised $346,000 (€327,000) from four- and five-figure US dollar donations, largely coming from construction and building subcontracting businesses in New York and New Jersey.
A further $41,000 (€39,000) was raised from small, online donations, which Friends of Sinn Féin president Mark Guilfoyle, a US attorney based in Kentucky, said “continue to be robust”.
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The six-month filing shows that the largest single donation was $20,000 from Eurotech Construction, a New York-based company founded by Co Tyrone native Fay Devlin, a long-time and generous financial supporter of Sinn Féin who also provides the political group office space, rent free, in the US.
Eurotech and Friends of Sinn Féin have offices at 1212 Avenue of the Americas, a short distance from the Rockefeller Centre and St Patrick’s Cathedral in midtown Manhattan.
There were more than a dozen individual contributions of $10,000 in the six-month period.
The largest expense incurred by the group was $119,700 on an annual fundraising golf event at Hudson National Golf Club in New York in September. A further $35,000 was spent on travel expenses.
Part of the purpose of the funding raised by the organisation is to cover the travel expenses of senior party figures who visit Washington and other American cities for political and civic meetings annually.
Friends of Sinn Féin is active in briefing US politicians on political developments, the push for Irish unification and the Northern Ireland peace process. It regularly lists briefings with US politicians in the filings with the US Department of Justice in Washington, DC.
The group held a “Unity Summit” in March in the Great Hall of the Cooper Union in Manhattan that was attended by party leader Mary Lou McDonald.
Mr Guilfoyle told The Irish Times in a statement that the group’s engagement with “activists” during the reporting period was “fuelled by intense interest in Irish unity”.
The latest fundraising haul by the group marks an increase on the 2023 October filings, which showed $320,000 raised, but falls considerably short of the $461,000 raised in 2022.
The latest Friends of Sinn Féin filing was made as the Irish-American organisation mourned the death of Pat Donaghy, a major donor to the party who emigrated to the US from Co Tyrone in the 1950s.
He co-founded the US building giant, Structure Tone, in 1971, which has become a major international firm. The company is listed as a donor of $10,000 in the latest Friends of Sinn Féin six-month filing.
The statement issued by Mr Guilfoyle praised the late Tyrone man as “as a loving husband, father and grandfather. His friends will remember him for his loyalty, support and generosity”.
“We in Friends of Sinn Féin will remember him as a proud Irish patriot who stood on the side of peace, justice and Irish unity,” the group said.
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