Senator John McGahon- speech from 17 May 2022

Lasky Herlock, Leader, my first experience of posters was in the 2004 local elections, I was 14 years of age, my dad at that stage had been a councillor for 15 years and I was helping him pull up posters at about 7 in the morning, my dad then fell off the ladder, broke a rib or two and then a week later lost his seat to a former member of this house, Senator Mark Deary from Dundalk, so that was my first experience in posters, it wasn't a good one and it wasn't a good election for my family either, but ever since then I have come to love posters I have come to seeing their value in the political system and in campaigns and first of all I'd just like to start off by commending Senator Pauline O'Reilly for bringing this debate to this house, there's very few things that Pauline and I disagree on politically speaking but this is one of them, but I think as Senator Byrne has said that this is a very important debate to have and this is what this house should be about and this is what this house is at its very best at, when we are debating issues that are of significance and that we can have opposing views on and we can have a respectful debate at the same time and I think this is very much what this debate is. It's very difficult to come into this debate when I have when so many other speakers have spoken before me without trying to reiterate some of the main points that have been made but I'd like to focus on just a few of my own key experiences of it. In 2014 when I was first running for election I was 22 years of age and that I found the ability to put up posters and be able to get my face out there in what was a wide geographical area of Dundalk Carlingford, it was 40% of Dundalk town and the entire Cooley Peninsula was really beneficial to me and that I found and then when I went and I called to doors because why on earth would anyone know a 22 year old running for election, I had no track record, nobody knew me, you know I was fresh out of college and I found that the use of posters was a very useful way of people to say oh you're the young fellow I saw on the poster, John, McGarhan, Fine Gael, whatever, it was a good way for me to introduce myself and I found that to be very very useful for me as a young first time candidate with no track record, no whatever. Fast forward then 2019, one thing that I thought was a bit of a laugh I suppose was that you saw councillors from right around the country putting forward motions to county councils to say we want to ban posters, they were poll toppers, they were poll toppers, I can name them myself, there were poll toppers in my own county, there were poll toppers in the county, they were getting elected anyway, didn't bother with this, of course it suited them not to have posters, you know, and you can see it, we can see it right across the place. So it was an easy, and I'm not suggesting this now to Senator O'Reilly whatsoever, but at the time, two months out before local elections, it's a bit of an easy motion for any councillor to put down and say oh we need to get away with posters and it gets a bit of publicity, they're poll toppers, it doesn't matter, they're welcome back into the council regardless of whether the motion is passed or not. And that's why I think this debate today is important, because it's not opportunistic, it's not just before an election, it's at a proper stage within this parliament that I think it's a good time now to debate this. But that's my experience of it. An absolute pet hate of mine, absolutely, is when you see the tags from posters. It's even now when you drive around and perhaps it's just because you're in politics, you notice it more often that you see them and I hate it. And when I'm up any poll myself and taking posters down, I make sure that I try and take as many of them. One other thing that I learned about posters is in a general election, everyone's very keen to help you get them up, but when you lose, it's only you taking them down. It takes a substantially longer amount of time and maybe a couple of fines from local authorities too. So everyone's keen to get them up, but when you lose, you're taking them down yourself. The other point though that I would say about it is, when you say, well, look, you could advertise in the modern era, you know, there's Facebook advertising that you can geo-target stuff. You've got to look at the demographics as well. Like the demographics of Facebook have shifted massively, that it's, you know, the average is 40, 50 plus are on Facebook, now younger people are on TikTok. There's, you know, the concept of being able to put posters right across the geographical area allows everybody, regardless of age or whatever, to be able to see who you are, know who the candidate is. And the other point that was made earlier on, which I do believe in as well, because it's easy for us who all live in a political bubble to think everyone is interested in politics and everyone knows what's going on. Like the vast majority of people don't care and they only realise an election is kind of happening once they see the posters go up and that kind of triggers people to turn around and say, oh yeah, geez, that election is happening. You know, I better look up who my local candidate is or, you know, people become tuned in and turned on to an election when posters go up. So I think they are such a fundamental part of our political discourse and our political campaigning that they still are, they do serve a purpose. I really do believe that. Again, when I look back, my other experiences of posters was back when I was in UCD during student elections and I wasn't very involved in student union elections, I was anti-student union. But it was a case of putting up posters, which was a poster run and Malcolm will remember and Senator Ward will remember, it was literally like there was a starting line. You had a hundred people with the posters and you were, it was carnage. It was organised chaos running down the concourse in UCD to get the best poster spots. That was another experience I had of posters. But all joking aside about it, I do think they play a fundamental role in our political campaigns, in our discourse. I do believe that they provide a very good advantage to newcomer candidates, and I think removing them provides a distinctly unfair advantage to incumbents who already have a substantially high name recognition. I really appreciate the debate we're having about this. I appreciate the, I think it's a very important debate to have, and I think there could be a compromise somewhere along the line in the future. Perhaps that compromises a cap on the number of posters, or perhaps that compromises, you can only put posters in certain areas. And the final point is to go back to what Senator Ward said, which one thing I do have an issue, and it didn't happen in my area, but I do have an issue at Tidy Towns, telling people that, oh, you can't put posters here and you can't put posters there. We're all happy to oblige and help out and follow those situations, but I would have a very real issue if that was to become extremely widespread, to then limit people right across the geographical constituency, when there is no law or anything else to say otherwise. But I welcome the debate, I think it's very good, and perhaps at some stage in the future there will be a compromise, but I think posters have a place to play. Thank you.