Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

No. His picture along with the pictures of me, Deputy Brian Cowen and Councillor John Foley appeared on the poster. It was not him. That incident happened so candidates should be careful. I have no hesitation in defending my action of taking down the posters.

The legislation also deals with the expenditure limits. I fully support limits. However, I believe they are outrageously large. I do not know if Laois is a typical county but the average spend by each of the candidates of my party in the last local election was €1,500. We spent €30,000 on approximately 20 candidates. The legislation permits €10,000 per candidate per electoral area. I calculated that our party could spend up to €750,000 on the local elections if we ran our full complement of candidates. It is daft. I thought the object was to curtail expenditure to some extent.

See this speech in context