The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
EVEN before the general election had been called, posters were appearing around the Banner, in contravention to legislation.
Candidates and parties are only allowed to erect posters after polling day has been fixed by ministerial order, but this was clearly breached in Clare last week, by numerous candidates, including certain candidates from the three largest parties and at least one independent.
Election posters are proving to be increasingly controversial in recent years, with tidy towns groups in certain parts of the county appealing to politicians not to put them up.
One could argue that they are far less important than in previous generations, given the rise of social media and near universal access to the internet.
Despite this, posters are still playing a major role in terms of increasing the recognisability of candidates, and huge sums are still spent on them in every election cycle.
Indeed the fact that candidates were putting posters up even before they were legally allowed to do so, shows the importance they attach to them. In theory, each breach of the regulations last week could have resulted in a €150 fine. While there have been requests from certain community groups for election posters not to be put up or to be confined to certain areas, legally candidates are entitled to ignore these if they so choose.
Shannon’s Patricia McCarthy was a councillor for many years and she said that she observed numerous election posters in place before Simon Harris went to Áras an Uachtaráin.
“I was out on the morning before he went, and there were posters for at least 50% of the candidates up. And prominent posters, huge ones,” she said.
She said that people who are looking to be elected to legislate for Ireland were openly breaching existing legislation, and that there are a number of other regulations around posters that are being breached.
“The laws are there, but do we actually enforce them and what does that tell you about society?” she said.
“It certainly frustrates me. New candidates do need to have recognition and this is a way for people to see them. But the law should be enforced. They can’t be putting them on roundabouts, junctions, can’t be putting them up before the election is called and shouldn’t be put on electricity poles, that’s four infringements off the top of my head.
“If people do all those, how can you seriously consider those people to be our lawmakers, how can you expect that they will bring in laws and live by them.”
Limits need to be put on where people can put their posters and how many of them can be erected, she added.
“The time has come to put some sort of a limit on them,” she said.
“There seems to be no repercussions at all, the ESB are warning about electricity poles, but they’re all using them. It’s gone out of hand and there has to be limits. I’m for postering, but it’s many years since I first said there should be designated areas in each town and village and each candidate should have a set number of posters.”
A bit of leadership is required, she feels.
“Somebody has got to take the bull by the horns and put in some sort of restriction, that each candidate can have so many posters and that’s it,” she said.
“It would depend on the size of the constituency. It’s out of control now.”
Owen Ryan
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked for a number of other regional titles in Limerick, Galway and Cork.
