Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council is investigating complaints against three politicians who appear to have jumped the starting gun on the general election by erecting posters early.
The three, who plan to run in the four-seater constituency of Dublin Rathdown, are sitting councillors Shay Brennan of Fianna Fáil, Maeve O’Connell of Fine Gael and Independent Michael Fleming.
A spokeswoman for the council said it was investigating complaints that posters for the candidates had been erected in advance of the polling date being set. Failure to remove an “illegal election poster” is subject to a fine of €150 per poster, she said.
The posters in question advertise “public meetings”, she said. This practice, which allows candidates to secure a prime position on a lamp-post, is not an offence if the poster is not erected more than 30 days before the date of the public meeting and is removed within seven days of the meeting.
The advert for the meeting can be attached to an election poster, as long a “Vote No 1″ sign, or any emblem calling for a vote for a candidate is covered.
In the case of some of Cllr Fleming and Cllr O’Connell’s posters, the public meeting label had become detached, revealing the appeal for a vote. Cllr Brennan’s public meeting posters remain intact, but the meeting was held on October 30th, more than a week ago.
Cllr Fleming said he had been made aware some of the public meeting notices, which were attached with staples, had come away from his posters and he had reattached the notices to any poster where this had happened. “I am not in breach of anything. I have been checking the posters and I’ve fixed any of them, and I’ve checked with the council and I am categorically not breaking any laws.”
He added that he always recycles his posters to save on waste “not like some environmentally-focused parties”.
Cllr Brennan also said he had the environment in mind when advertising his meeting.
“I was holding a public meeting which we initially had a small run of posters printed for. It was on a very popular and useful topic, careers in the EU, and we got many queries about it,” he said. “I wanted to advertise it to more people, so rather than order more one-off posters it was much less wasteful to repurpose some of my election posters, which had just been delivered.”
The posters “fully adhere to and are compliant with litter rules”, he said.
Cllr Brennan said he realised he had gone “slightly” over the seven-day limit, but hoped a “common sense approach” would be taken. “I don’t really think it reasonable to send people up a ladder twice in 24 hours,” he said.
Cllr O’Connell did not respond to queries from The Irish Times.
Any candidate would be given 24 hours to fix or remove an “illegal election poster”, the council spokeswoman said.
