The Green Minister's plan to control election postering is politically correct meddling, writes Noel Whelan.
IT IS hard to believe that the Minister for the Environment John Gormley and his officials have so little to do that they can spend time worrying about election posters. This week the Minister announced with some fanfare that he is to hold an eight-week consultation process, no less, to examine how to address what he describes as the pollution and littering problem caused by election posters.
Gormley is now at the ministerial desk in the Custom House for just over a year. One would have assumed that great challenges like global warming or significant local concerns like chemical contamination in Cork Harbour would consume all his energies, but apparently not.
Over the next while, he and his department will expend time, energy and presumably some taxpayers' money meddling in the area of election poster campaigning.
In announcing his public consultation this week, the Minister invited individuals and organisations to send their views on the issue to his department's environmental policy division. He also tossed out some possible solutions to the supposed problem he has identified.
If those so-called solutions to a perceived problem are any measure, this process already has all the hallmarks of politically correct bureaucratic busy-bodyness. It is also ill-thought out.
One suggestion is a code of practice to define how and where election posters would be erected. It is not clear what, if any, role a Government department should or could have in agreeing or administering a code of conduct about the deployment of posters between political parties. An even crazier suggestion floated in the Minister's press release is that individual councils could introduce bylaws to further restrict election postering.
This review is happening not because of any pressing public demand to restrict election posters, but because the Green Party has always had a bee in its bonnet on the issue. In their early days they were almost puritanical, naively adopting a policy of having no election posters at all. They quickly realised that this was political suicide and changed their position in part, I suspect, because they saw how effective posters are. Indeed, Gormley himself had one of the most prolific and effective poster campaigns in his Dublin South East constituency in last year's general election. Interestingly, a press release by Gormley during last year's campaign in his capacity as Green Party chairman provided that in government they would demand a limit of 150 posters per candidate to be erected at official local authority sites. In the same press release Gormley proposed a ban on election literature, suggesting that each party would instead have the opportunity to synopsise policies in one official booklet to be sent to each household. Thankfully this notion appears to have fallen off his agenda.
The introduction of poster restrictions along the lines Gormley suggests would not only take much of the colour out of our elections but would also amount to a significant and potentially unconstitutional interference with freedom of expression.
More significantly, such restrictions would significantly advantage sitting TDs or councillors. Letting each local council decide its own bylaws raises the spectre of larger parties on councils agreeing rules discriminating against smaller ones, or members designating locations which disadvantage first-time candidates. Sitting members have a vested interest in minimising poster activity because they have already established name recognition.
Election posters serve an important function. They announce the candidature of a person and this is particularly important for new candidates. They establish the candidate's name and party affiliation in the voter's mind and mark out the geographic extent of the electoral area or constituency he or she is contesting. This is important in cities where frequent redraws can leave voters unsure of which candidates are running.
Political campaigning in this country is increasingly expensive and competitive, but posters represent cheap and cost-effective campaigning. Restricting poster numbers or locations would discriminate against smaller parties or Independents who lack the media machine or resources to use more expensive communication channels.
Gormley's move is part of a precious attitude which views posters and election literature as impositions. It is an attitude which is all too common in the middle-class suburbs of south Dublin where the Green Party has its strongest electoral base.
It is further evidence of an unhealthy trend towards taking the drama, fun and excitement out of our elections. We will ultimately pay a price for the sterilisation of politics in lack of public interest and lower turnouts.
If the Minister wants to busy himself with electoral reform, there are a number of matters on which he could more usefully spend his time over the next eight weeks. The establishment of a long-promised electoral commission is behind schedule, and electronic voting machines are still costing our beleaguered exchequer thousands a week in storage fees because he has not yet made the decision to abandon the system.
Politicians should be judged by their priorities as well as their policies. On this week's evidence, the Minister for the Environment has his priorities all wrong.