Sir, – As Cormac McQuinn reports (News August 9th), the Government has committed to asking the Electoral Commission to “consult on placing limitations on the number of [election] posters that can be used or fixing certain locations for their use” during an election, with a view to introducing new possible regulations before the local and European elections in 2024.
One aspect that would be necessary for review is the use of “public meeting” posters by election candidates imminently before restrictions on the erection of bona fide election posters a number of set days before a given election date are lifted.
Essentially this has become an exploited loophole where candidates can advertise a full- size election-style photograph effectively in the same way as a fully fledged election poster, before official election posters are permitted for placement.
The spirit and the letter of the law are quite clear in indicating that it is intended that campaign postering is only permitted within a brief duration of approximately a month before an election because it is a special suspension of usual littering laws intended to avoid cluttering streets.
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If such “public meeting” posters are to be permitted in future, new restrictions should be introduced stipulating, akin to Dublin City Council bylaws on the matter, that only a maximum of 40 per cent of the dimensions of such a poster should be allocated to a politician’s photograph, with the rest of the poster providing genuine informational details about the “public meeting” and its rationale. – Yours, etc,
Cllr JOHN KENNEDY,
(Fine Gael),
Dún Laoghaire
Rathdown County
Council Offices,
Dún Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.
