Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for being late. I listened to Senator Pauline O'Reilly's opening contribution on my phone while on my way to the Chamber. I welcome the Minister of State to the House. As ever, he is very welcome.

I commend anyone who puts in the work and brings forward a Private Members' Bill. I also sympathise with the Senators on the motion to delay. I have experienced that on a number of occasions, particularly around electoral reform issues. The voting at 16 Bill was delayed on two occasions in the last term. On this occasion, I will make the case for posters and I hope it will be a robust case.

We can all agree that posters, regardless of whether they are placed on designated structures, play a very important and vibrant part in our democracy. As the Chair said, they create a sense of an election. People like Theresa Reidy would agree that democratic participation is assisted by the presence of posters. They ensure that the electorate is aware an election is on. Senator O'Reilly talked about social capital. In the absence of posters, a large number of people, perhaps those in marginalised groups who are not as engaged in current affairs programming, would be at a disadvantage in terms of the awareness of an election, and that would affect the turnout. We know that when posters go up, the campaign is elevated and made real for so many people. I am a supporter of election posters. Sinn Féin is certainly a supporter of election posters. I joined Sinn Féin at 16 years old when we had four Deputies. We have been a small party and a big party.

I also believe that restricting posters would give an advantage to incumbents. New candidates struggle to get their names out there. It takes time to build a social media presence and they may have to contend with an echo chamber. If posters are restricted to a certain number of locations in each local electoral area or polling district, the campaigns with deeper pockets will be able to use private spaces, bus shelters, mobile billboards and car wraps, to gain an advantage.

Renters would not be allowed to put billboards or posters in their garden. Homeowners would be allowed to do so, but renters would need the agreement of their landlord. I cannot get on board with the idea of equalising the space for all candidates because I think campaigns with more money may have an advantage if we restrict posters.

Everything has a carbon footprint. Carpenters will be used to build possibly thousands of designated structures. If there are 166 local electoral areas in the country, depending on how many designated structures would be needed we could be looking at thousands of structures having to be built. As I said, everything has a carbon footprint. Canvassing probably has a very high carbon footprint in terms of driving cars. The hierarchy of waste includes reduce, reuse, recycle. In regard to reuse, I had 250 posters in my local election campaign of 2014. They are still sitting in the attic. Similar to what Senator Cummins said, I would say I am unrecognisable. I had 250 posters but some candidates go way overboard. Posters do not get candidates elected, as the Minister of State and others are aware. I was very impressed that he did not have any election posters. There is definitely merit in the argument to reduce the number of posters. For a number of elections, we have reduced the size of posters to better match the size of the pole. This means fewer cable ties are used and fewer posters blow away.

In terms of reuse, many candidates wipe down their posters, dry them out and put them away. In terms of recycling, perhaps the civic amenity should be open for a greater amount of time after an election or, indeed, all the time. I have nothing good to say about cable ties. I try to collect as many as possible when we are taking down posters. I probably remove triple the number of cable ties relative to posters we have put up.

I am thinking about winter elections, when people do not have a chance to answer the knock on the door. Maybe 50% of doors will be answered if a candidate is doing well. Many people have "No junk mail" signs. Sometimes these things can be a sign of an anti-politics feeling, as much as environmentalism.

I will finish on a point that dawned on me when Mary Upton was asked by the Ceann Comhairle to chair the family-friendly forum, which I was invited to sit on. I welcomed her and told her that I remember coming home on a school run when I was five or six years of age and spotting Mary Upton in a car. We realised who she was because of the posters we saw around the constituency. That is the sense of an election for a five- or six-year-old that might be lost if we go too far in restricting posters. Candidates will never advertise to people who are not on the electoral register.