Lech Walesa - the Nobel Prize laureate has admitted to being paid to attend the Libertas conference

It is a curious flavour that Libertas leader Declan Ganley is bringing to the European stage. A level of politics that leaves a bad taste in the mouth – no matter where one stands on the question of the EU.

For a while last week, my mailbox was filled with an extraordinary exchange of increasingly unpleasant emails between Ganley and Marian Harkin, an Irish MEP running against him in the North West constituency in Ireland.

It concerned where each candidate stands on abortion. A topic that, pre-Ganley, had not been harnessed to the EU elections in Ireland. But which is sensitive in this socially conservative constituency.

It started when Ganley suggested that while Harkin may personally be against abortion, she is sitting with a party that supports abortion policies and advocates the introduction of euthanasia. Harkin, an independent MEP, sits with the Liberal Group in the European Parliament. She says the group allows her to follow her conscience on this issue.

Harkin claims that Ganley’s cohorts on the ground have been saying outright that she is pro-abortion – a charge Ganley’s movement denies. She later challenged him on the abortion stance of Libertas candidates in the Netherlands and in Spain. They bounced back and forth on this for a while. The exchange has stopped now and neither side came out of it looking very well, this not being a topic, once politicised, that is open to nuance.

But, arguably, it is Harkin’s name that has been strongly linked with the abortion question in people’s minds.

Another example springs to mind. Declan Ganley recently labelled Jim Higgins, the Fine Gael MEP in the constituency, “Swimmer Jim,” claiming he voted for a €9.2 million swimming pool for the European Parliament.

Swimmer Jim. It’s a clever name and one that difficult to dislodge in people’s minds. The only problem with the claim is that Higgins never did vote for the pool, plans for which, incidentally, were never really on the table.

Cute moves, I suppose. If you think that sort of mud-slinging is good for politics.

But it does not sit well with someone who claims to be taking on Brussels on the grand themes of accountability, transparency and responsibility.

And as a slight aside. I see that Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza revealed that Lech Walesa was paid for his attendance at the Libertas Convention in Rome on Friday, although the former Solidarity leader did not say how much.

Ganley offered a fawning introduction to the Pole before his surprise appearance at the convention, “childhood hero” and all that sort of stuff. And yet Walesa was paid to come. Odd, I find.

This comes on top of allegations by Sweden’s eurosceptic Junilisten party that Libertas offered money to have it come under the Libertas umbrella and that Ganley himself is bankrolling its branch in Poland by cleverly bypassing local electoral laws.

In addition, Libertas dragged and dragged its feet before telling an Irish ethics committee how its anti-Lisbon treaty referendum campaign was funded. The anti-treaty movement says it is innocent of all allegations.

Be that as it may, I say once again, for a party that bangs on about transparency in Brussels…