Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Of course not, and I am not really suggesting the Senator did. I do not believe political parties have an advantage. Anybody can put up posters. In fact, the people who get a real advantage from posters, the real name recognition, are the first-time candidates.

There are lots of other reasons. The international comparisons are perhaps not as reasonable as they might appear. Let us take the example of other jurisdictions where there is a single place in a village or town square where people are allowed to place posters. That system may work very well for them but other jurisdictions have different electoral systems. Many of them have list systems, for example, so people vote for parties rather than individuals. Until we change our system and make it otherwise, the individual will be the trump in our elections. Individuals, even if they are part of a multi-candidate party ticket or courageous Independents, must be able to put their name out there and do their best to publicise themselves in a reasonable way. Hamstringing them is unfair, in my respectful view. It is important not to make comparisons with countries. While this approach may well work for them, I do not believe it would work for us in the same way.

Another factor is our geography. We do not have the same focus on villages and towns. Our population is much more widely spread than populations in much of the rest of Europe. People tend to live in villages and town centres in Europe in a way that we do not. Thank God the Irish countryside is relatively well populated with people who are dispersed throughout the countryside. They would lose out in a circumstance where they had to go into the village centre to see the posters. As such, I do not agree with that analysis either.

Pageantry is important. Although as a politician, a political nerd and somebody who follows this kind of thing, I might appreciate the pageantry that comes with politics. That is not a good enough reason, however. What is a good enough reason is the actual publication of the fact of an election. People get their information in different ways now. In particular, young people often do not subscribe to the mainstream news that might come through RTÉ at 6 p.m. on the television, 1 p.m. on the radio or whatever other time it might be. Those people may not even know there is an election on if they are not plugged into the right channels or if they are not aware of the political process or whatever it might be. As a politician, we would hope they would be aware of it and that we would be able to reach them but the way we reach them now is through postering, among other things. Postering is a really effective way of announcing an election is taking place and the candidates in the area who people can vote for. It creates a discussion around the postering and, therefore, around the election. It is important to publicise an election and ensure that as many people as possible are included in the process and informed about it. Of course, there are other ways to do that but postering is a key part of that. To eliminate postering to the extent proposed in the Bill would do a disservice to those who have the opportunity to vote and participate in that election.

I am sorry to keep picking on Senator Boyhan but he mentioned Mount Merrion and Dalkey, which are areas that are local to both of us.