Gormley to announce halving of poll-spend limit to €15,000

MINISTER FOR the Environment John Gormley is to make a “firm announcement” next week about election spending limits and indicated he would halve election limits from €30,150 to €15,000.

Pressed during Dáil environment questions by Labour spokesman Ciarán Lynch who claimed the Minister “has not delivered on this issue”, Mr Gormley insisted “it is my intention to have the limits in place for the local elections to be held this year”.

The Minister also said a pilot scheme to restrict election postering for the June poll, would be introduced by local authorities.

As Opposition TDs highlighted the importance of posters for local democracy and suggested new proposals were “political correctness”, Mr Gormley stressed that they were a reasonable compromise – dealing with biodegradable or colour-coded plastic ties; restricting posters to certain areas; restricting the number of posters per candidate; and limiting the number of posters per candidate on a pole to two, back to back.

The Minister indicated that he supported the Green Paper recommendation that Dáil election spending should be reduced by half, from €30,150 to €15,000. He believed it was “the way to go”.

There was a case for “setting different limits for county and city councils on the one hand and borough and town councils on the other hand”. Mr Lynch accused the Minister of “prevaricating” on the issue when there were just over 100 days to the local elections and he insisted there were no complexities. Local candidates needed a limit to be put on election spending to create a level playing field. He pointed to the “direct correlation between election spending and election outcome”.

Mr Gormley pointed to complexities such as electoral areas ranging from a low of 6,470 to a high of 51,803. “This is a huge variation,” he said. The Minister said the issues were complex and had to be teased out, but “I will be in a position next week to make a firm announcement”.

Opposition deputies however were concerned at the scheme for postering, which the Minister said was important to have in place before legislation was introduced “in order to ensure that the final legislation is as effective as possible”. He is also reviewing litter legislation to deal with posters.

Mr Lynch believed that posters “play a very, very positive role in the operation of elections” and he was concerned that there was “the potential that one local authority will be operating one system and another local authority operating another system”. He said there “should be a national system in place, not a localised one”.

Finian McGrath (Ind, Dublin North-Central) said the tags issue was “very simple”. His election workers cut down the tags with “tree trimmer things” and got them recycled.

Joanna Tuffy (Labour, Dublin Mid-West) said the restrictions were political correctness and dismissed the pilot scheme. “It’s pandering to people who treat democracy and elections like it’s some kind of untidy intrusion on their lives.” She said “if elections are there you put up posters . . . and then you make sure people take them down”.