Beware Dublin City Council are removing posters that they deem in breach of protocol. They are failing to inform the candidates or their crews that they are doing this which is leading to great confusion on the ground.

For those who are missing posters check with DCC litter management and retrieve your posters.  The posters for the Dublin Bay South candidates are being stored in Rathmines.

And again we are not being informed about this. The state of the city with the guts ripped out of it from the Luas construction, delapidated buildings and boarded up flats and here are DCC using staff resources to pull down election posters.  The breath taking arrogance of this that they can go around willy nilly.  I’m surprised they haven’t franchised it out to Greyhound.

Its unfair on the major effort that is being made by all the candidates and their crews in atrocious weather conditions to try and create a public platform for themselves in this forthcoming election.  Especially for Independent candidates who are finding it increasingly difficult to compete with  main parties and the financial resources they have not to mention the monopolized media coverage that they get.

I don’t want to see any poster causing a hazard or danger to anybody and if I got the opportunity I’d ban them outright and create a different system.  I did put a motion to ask for the banning of posters after the Giro Italia but it didn’t get passed with fellow councillors so we are left, for now,  with the present situation. And I agree, it is a visual pollutant and its over the top.

But Independents don’t have any other choice in the matter right now as well as that its a very expensive process to print posters, cable ties, ladders, insurance etc.

No candidate goes out there to litter. No candidate goes out there to cause obstruction or hindrance or danger when postering. But if I was to stick a big banner across one of the buildings in Dublin advertising Lucozade there would be nobody for DCC trying to tear it down. There would be the usual hocus pocus letter writing, weeks would go by before the offending massive banner was taken down. Yet, when it comes to us and our posters, they become ultra efficient in taking them down and not even bothering to inform us that we can get them back.

I’m on my way up to Rathmines now to get my posters back.  I do wish the Council would have told me without me having to go through this unnecessary rigmarole.