Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)

Okay. The people who are driving this Spoiled the Vote process are part of the elite. They are not anti-establishment at all. They are a different, more socially conservative part of the elite than Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. They are the Opus Dei wing of the establishment - wealthy fundamentalist Catholics who want to drag us back to the Ireland of the Magdalen laundries, the mother and baby homes and the industrial schools. They want to make divorce and contraception illegal again. They want to abolish choice and bodily autonomy and force women back into the home.

People have the right to spoil their vote; there is no question about that. However, if they do so, they will be being taken for fools, like the millions of working-class Americans who voted for billionaire businessman Donald Trump because they thought he was anti-establishment. That is the reality. People who spoil their vote are offering to be the dupes of the Irish millionaires. They should not be under any illusion that Micheál Martin, Simon Harris or Heather Humphreys will be upset. They will not be upset. All the spoiled votes will go into one big pile in the count centre. People in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will not care what people write on their ballot papers. The only thing they care about is that the more spoiled votes there are from people who are rightly angry with and alienated from the political establishment, the fewer votes there will be for the candidate who is not their candidate and the less embarrassing a defeat it will be for them and the establishment.

If people want to strike a blow against the political establishment, against Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, on Friday, they should not spoil their votes. There are two candidates, one of whom will win. One is the Government candidate and the other is an Independent candidate backed by the Opposition. One of them, like most ordinary Irish people, voted "No" in the first Nice and Lisbon treaty referendums.

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