Posters for local elections banned until next Friday

Posters for local election candidates have been banned from Dublin's streets until next Friday, following an emergency meeting yesterday between council officials and the main political parties to clear up confusion over postering arrangements.

The decision is particularly embarrassing for the Green Party, whose candidates' pro-environment, anti-litter message has been proclaimed from pole-tops around the city since last weekend. The party, which says it was misinformed, will now have to take down its posters, only to put them back up after Friday's deadline.

Only Labour and the Greens supported an earlier starting date for local election postering at yesterday's meeting between the city manager, Mr John Fitzgerald, and representatives of the main parties. The other parties supported the current arrangements, which have allowed European election postering since last Saturday.

Some local election candidates have complained that this allows European candidates to grab the prime slots for postering around the city.

Under the council's code of practice, postering is also banned on certain traffic features such as traffic signals and in parts of central Dublin such as O'Connell Street, Grafton Street, Henry Street and the main Georgian squares. The code has been widely ignored by some candidates in both elections, whose posters started appearing up to a fortnight ago.

Council workers yesterday continued to take down posters which infringed the code. Separately, the OPW removed election posters on St Stephen's Green, an area for which it is responsible. After The Irish Times reported yesterday that Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Sinn Féin and the Greens were among those breaking the "gentleman's agreement" between the council and the political parties, the Greens' election agent, Mr Colm Ó Caomhánaigh, said they had been given differing advice.

Mr Ó Caomhánaigh said the council's director of traffic, Mr Owen Keegan, told the party it could start putting up local election posters on the same day as applied for the European election, i.e. last Saturday.

This is contrary to the date specified by the council in newspaper notices as recently as last Saturday.

The situation is further confused by the fact that in earlier versions of the notice, the council specified the later date - next Friday - for both elections. When it discovered that the notification deadline for the European elections was longer than for the local elections, it brought the postering deadline forward by the corresponding length of time.

Council spokesman Mr Hugh Fahy confirmed that the city manager and the parties had agreed that the published dates would apply, so local election postering may not start until Friday.