Do election posters still serve a purpose?

I recently discovered that my doorbell wasn't working. It was just little over one month to the local and European elections and not a single candidate had darkened my door.

Clearly, something was wrong. In the run up to the 2011 General Election they were tripping over themselves to get some face time at my front door. There weren't too many from Fianna Fail, though, which was understandable given the political and economic climate at the time.

So I checked my doorbell last week and discovered it was on the blink. Case closed, or so I thought. But neighbours of mine with fully functional doorbells and knockers also reported a dearth of canvassers on their doorsteps. There were leaflets hastily shoved through letterboxes, right enough, but no one was seemingly willing to engage with householders on the pertinent issues of the day. I would have welcomed the opportunity to have chat. Who knows, they may even have been offered a cup of tea and a scone.

In fairness, you'd have to feel a degree of sympathy for candidates from Fine Gael and Labour, particularly those seeking election for the first time. They have to run the gauntlet of public anger over everything from property tax to water charges - not to mention that pothole at the end of the road. Like a bloody moon crater, so it is.

Similarly, the Fianna Fail boys and girls will be getting a hard time over the state they left the house in last time they were in charge. Biffo and Bertie may be gone but their ghosts still haunt the party.

We are always polite to the Independents when they call to the house, as we are to the various left wing candidates. It's somewhat disappointing when we learn that they're not from one of the bigger parties because we can't really have a go at them over anything. It would be different if we had Ming or Mick Wallace in our constituency, I suppose.

Last week we were reminded that the local and European elections were just a cat's whisker away when the ubiquitous posters went up. ESB Networks warned against placing posters on its poles or structures. Apart from the obvious risks to life and limb, the company has previously experienced incidents where election posters have caught fire following contact with the electricity network, resulting in loss of supply to customers and damaged infrastructure.

So instead of debating the election issues, we got caught up in issues such as posters falling down; being up too high; being down too low; posters blowing down; blocking traffic lights etc. And what about the cable ties left behind when the posters come down? It would keep poor Joe Duffy busy for a week, so it would.

A colleague of mine mused if election posters were somewhat archaic, a relic of the past in an era dominated by social media. He had a point. But even the most tech-savvy candidate can only reach so many of the electorate through Facebook and Twitter and not all voters have embraced the brave new world of the internet. So posters remain the favourite tool for building a profile with voters. It's an expensive and labour-intensive way of getting your message out there. Personally I'd prefer if candidates spent their limited budgets on advertisements in their favourite local newspaper but I would say that, wouldn't I? If nothing else, the very presence of posters - annoying and unsightly as they are - might help remind people that there are two elections taking place on May 23 and they should get out and vote.

In the meantime, I hope to see an increasing number of candidates at my door in the remaining weeks of the election campaigns. Just remember that the doorbell doesn't work so please knock.

Is confusion over water charges all part of the plan?

They've done it again. After creating a cloud of confusion around the introduction of the Local Property Tax (LPT), the Government seems intent on ensuring that we are kept in the dark for as long as possible about the full impact of water charges.

This week the issue descended into pure farce, starting with reports that a €100 standing charge would apply annually before a single drop of water leaves our taps. Within 48 hours Government sources were indicating that a figure of €50 or less was more likely.

•The installation of water meters is well underway. FILE PHOTO

Then in advance of today’s Cabinet meeting it was suggested that the average household would be charged around €248 a year for their water usage. There were all sorts of vague promises being bandied about regarding extra allowances for people with special needs and additional children, as if this was bringing a good news element to the story.

The Labour horses were spooked and started throwing their toys out of the pram, with some within the party describing the water charges proposals as “half-baked”. With the Local and European Elections little over a month away, you can understand their heightened interest in the issue. Just imagine the abuse that Fine Gael and Labour candidates are getting on the doorsteps over LPT and water charges. The ongoing uncertainty will not help their campaigns and I would have a degree of sympathy for the candidates, particularly those seeking election for the first time.

The water charges issue is a political time bomb and could well prove to be a tipping point in our fragile tolerance for austerity. The sense of injustice is compounded by the fact that there will be a standing charge in the first place. This gives lie to the fiction that water charges are mostly about conservation and responsible usage and not just another State-led money grabbing exercise.

I personally believe that the €100 standing charge rumour was a stalking horse designed to put the fear of God into us all. The fact that it is likely to be lower – at least initially – is supposed to be met with relief and make having to pay the new tax that little bit more palatable. 

 A cynic would suggest, rightly or wrongly, that the Government is deliberately setting out to cause maximum confusion. I suspect that a similar approach was taken when LPT was introduced. There was so much uncertainty created over payment methods and house valuations that it was easy to overlook the unjust and immoral imposition of a property tax as a matter of principle. Hitting mortgage holders with LPT in the wake of a spectacular property crash is akin to increasing taxes on potato farmers during the blight. 

Like many others, I filed my return last year for property tax due in 2014 and then largely forgot about it until a sizable chunk of my month's salary was sucked out of my bank account in mid-March. This was disposable income, by the way, that would ordinarily have been spent in local shops, pubs or restaurants, helping to sustain employment and keep businesses viable. Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't this Government vow to tackle the jobs crisis?

Fine Gael and Labour may be telling anyone who'll listen that LPT and water charges are a legacy of the last Government and to an extent this may be true. However, this Coalition's ham-fisted handling of both issues remains nothing short of shameful. You really couldn't make this stuff up.

A case of 'much done, more to do' for Sinn Féin

If a week is a long time in politics, it seems that three years is an eternity. Back in May 2011, Sinn Féin (with the exception of the now deceased Mayor of Cashel) decided to snub the Queen of England during her historic state visit to the Republic of Ireland.

In doing so, the party badly misjudged the public mood. The royal visit was widely hailed as a political and symbolic success, cementing relations between our once warring nations. As Queen Elizabeth bowed her head in the Garden of Remembrance and recited her cúpla focal as Gaelige in Dublin Castle, the Shinners were nowhere to be seen. Talk about missing out on a photo opportunity!

•Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, then Minister for Foreign Affairs Brian Cowen and Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness pictured outside St Luke's, Drumcondra, May 2003. PHOTO BY DARREN KINSELLA

 

Nothing much has changed in Anglo-Irish relations since the Queen's visit and we continue to get on famously with our nearest neighbours. The peace process, despite attempts by dissidents to derail it, has largely held solid. At the time it struck me as curious that key signatories to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement should boycott a visit from the royals. Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, Martin McGuinness, didn't seem to have any problems pressing the flesh with the Queen when she was in Belfast in 2012 so why did he not greet her in Dublin a year earlier? Would this have been a concession too far for the party's grassroots members in the 26 counties?

Three years on and we're no closer than we were back then to achieving a united Ireland, yet Sinn Féin seems to have softened its stance and has belatedly come to the royal party. Don't get me wrong, the fact that McGuinness attended the state banquet this week at Windsor Castle was a welcome move and can only but further progress made by Sinn Féin in presenting itself as a legitimate political force on both sides of the border.

Under its present leadership, I believe Sinn Féin is unlikely to make the electoral gains that the polls suggest. For all his new cuddliness and whimsical tweeting, Gerry Adams remains both the party's greatest strength and weakness. He is a symbol of Sinn Féin's Republican ethos but is arguably too close to the party's past for some people's liking.

Unlike Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness has not denied his previous role in the IRA and is all the more credible for it. Adams has stuck to this mantra for so long now that he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

Mary Lou McDonald will undoubtedly be the heir apparent when Adams eventually decides to stand aside. She performed particularly well during the Dail's Public Accounts Committee hearings into Rehab and her contribution to the recent Garda scandals has been articulate and forceful. She will also appeal to middle-class voters and doesn't have the pre-peace process baggage of some of her party colleagues. And even though Sinn Féin is perceived to be weak on economic issues, the party is starting to find a more coherent voice through impressive Dáil performers like Pearse Doherty.

But to gain a wider acceptance among the electorate, Sinn Féin needs to be unequivocal when it comes to condemning previous acts of violence by the IRA. On a recent television programme, one member of the party refused to condemn outright the murder of gardai by the IRA. He repeatedly trotted out the view that the killing of gardai needed to be seen in the historic context of collusion with security forces in the North, or some old blather along those lines. This is a spurious argument that does a great disservice to the memory of gardai like Jerry McCabe who was killed by members of the Provisional IRA during an attempted robbery in Adare, Co Limerick, in 1996.

Sinn Féin is making strides politically but it might do well to borrow an earlier election slogan from Fianna Fáil - 'much done, more to do'. Martin McGuinness breaking bread with Queen Elizabeth in Windsor Castle was a positive step in the right direction.

Free legal aid for criminals an unsavoury reality

As the Garda controversies drag on, it's difficult to know where to direct your anger. Whether you blame Garda management, successive Governments or politics at large, the thing that galls many of us is the notion of vicious criminals attempting to overturn their convictions in the belief that their telephone calls may have been recorded without their knowledge.

Some of Ireland's most reviled crime figures have already engaged their solicitors. Ultimately it will be up to the courts to decide if they have an arguable case or not. We may not like it, but we will simply have to let the judicial process take its course if an unsavoury ragbag of convicted murderers, rapists and armed robbers look for their day in court, as is expected.

The latest scandal over the recording of phone calls will clog up an already overburdened court system. Cases that are pending will be put back as defendants' solicitors seek to establish if the guards were eavesdropping on their private conversations while in custody. Some of those already behind bars will be having an opportunistic pop at the State as well - even if their guilt has been well established through corroborative evidence presented at their trial. Sure why not? What have they got to lose?

Each appeal will have to be decided on its own merit so it's too early to second guess the outcome at this stage or be able to gauge what impact - if any - the recordings had in securing convictions.

So who'll be paying for these expensive, drawn out appeals? In many cases I imagine that the taxpayer will be footing the bill through free legal aid as thugs without alternative means of income seek to challenge their convictions.

Free legal aid may be a central tenet of our court system but I am personally uncomfortable with the the State providing such a potentially unlimited resource for repeat offenders, particularly those with multiple convictions for offences at the higher end of the scale.

Former hurling legend DJ Carey touched on this issue over the weekend after a relative of his was the victim of a robbery. A national newspaper reported that he lashed out at the millions being spent on "scumbag" thieves through the free legal aid system while at the same time Garda resources have been cut.

On one hand it's easy to have sympathy for this view. Would there be merit in considering a 'three strikes and you're out' approach to free legal aid for certain offences? For instance, if you have had three convictions for armed robbery, should you have to pay for your own defence or represent yourself if you come before the court on a fourth or subsequent similar charge?

In an ideal world, perhaps. However, the latest controversies have shown that gardai don't always behave the way we expect them to in the administration of justice. I still believe that the majority of the force are ethical, dedicated servants of the State. But history has taught us that the Garda Siochana is not above scrutiny.

Thanks to the practice of recording phone conversations in certain Garda stations and in prisons, our courts will almost certainly have to consider related applications for free legal aid. Law abiding members of the public and victims of crime will simply have to stand by and watch through gritted teeth.