Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful that this matter was selected as we spent our Friday last week dealing with this issue and the outrage of many voters at what they saw as the flagrant violation of the law with regard to electioneering near polling stations. There are two issues here with which we need to grapple. The first is the law prohibiting the display of election posters within 50 m of a polling station. Obviously, there were many instances last week where a massive array of “No” posters appeared overnight in greater proximity to polling stations than that. However, there was a complete failure on the part of the Garda, local authorities or the returning officers concerned to take any action.

It was ironic in my area where the local authority early on in the campaign jumped the gun and took down a load of posters and then apologised for that, on the days of the election and the count its officials were nowhere to be seen and did not answer their phones. Residents rang and asked them to come out. Similarly, the Garda did not take any action either.

I am wondering what we can do to enforce the law. Can we have clarity on where the polling station is? Is it the table or the desk where the voting is or is it the entrance to the building, and have we given any thought to getting rid of posters? Particularly in this current climate of the damaging nature of plastics, we should be moving to a scenario where it is regulated, as in other European countries where, for example, one might have one big billboard in a communal area where people can go in a town or village on which everybody puts up their posters. Something has to be done about the blight on our landscape.

The other issue that caused even greater outcry was what could be deemed to be a devious manipulation of the election rules and an inappropriate display of religious iconography in close proximity to the polling stations. Many of our voting stations are Catholic schools. One would expect to see some symbolism in a Catholic school. However, the reports we were receiving went way beyond this, involving the strategic location of religious iconography in order to, as residents put it to me, “influence the vote”. For example, in Garristown, a rural part of my constituency, residents were outraged. In 40 years voting in the same location, they had never seen anything like it. There was literally an altar that they had to pass on the way in. In Booterstown, we received reports of a religious statue placed at the entrance. On the Navan Road, where residents normally walk in through the main door of the school, they were diverted around to a side entrance and they had to pass a display.

In Galway, a resident found a Bible on the polling booth. He was getting his ballot paper and when he objected to the two women, who said, “Sorry about that”, he went to the garda. The garda agreed that should not be there but an hour later when his wife voted the same Bible was still there. The gardaí did not want to know. The Returning Officer did not want to know.

In Sallins national school, the same occurred. Residents were very unhappy to have to go pass a wall full of hand-drawn pictures of the Virgin Mary. When a resident contacted Kildare County Council, it sent them to the Garda. The Garda sent the resident to the Referendum Commission, which stated it was nothing to do with it and sent the resident to the National Presiding Officer.

There were so many accounts from different parts of the country that it could not have been a co-incidence. There were just too many. I have never heard that previously. When, in Garristown, for example, the residents said to me there is a perfectly good gym hall where there would be no imagery, and asked why did they not put the desks there, it seemed to be quite strategic. That seemed to me to be a manipulation of the law.

I am wondering whether the Minister is looking at any way in which we could regulate this and ensure that this would never happen again.

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