By-election posters provoke a wry smile

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column

Michael Commane

There is a by-election in Dublin Bay South this Thursday.

St Luke’s Hospital in Rathgar, where I work, is in the constituency and I live just a few footsteps outside the constituency.

This is a traditional Fine Gael seat. The former housing minister Eoghan Murphy is leaving politics and retiring as the constituency TD, hence Thursday’s election.

There are 15 candidates putting their names in the ring.

It means over the last few weeks I have been passing pole after pole festooned with election posters of the candidates.

On Saturday I went for a seven kilometre walk, which took me through a leafy part of the constituency, Palmerston Park, Ranelagh and Dartry.

What did I learn from the posters I saw? Certainly I learned zilch about their political philosophy. Why the posters? The marketing people talk about name recognition.

I think I’m fairly neutral, which gave me some chance of being objective about the posters I saw. It also allowed me to see the funny side to it all.

Labour’s candidate is Senator Ivana Bacik. Her poster caught my attention. I know it’s only a poster, and graphics of their nature must allow for a certain poetic licence. 

But Ivana’s poster did bring a wry smile to my face. It’s obviously attempting to be artistic. But really does it work? It’s a graphic of a young woman with a scarf around her neck, wheeling a bicycle. 

But it’s the weirdest bicycle I have ever seen. It has no brakes, no chain, no mudguards but it does have a basket. And why in heaven’s name is the young woman wearing a scarf. After all, the election is in mid-summer. 

Then there’s the poster of the Fine Gael candidate James Geoghegan. It’s just a mugshot of the man. The moment I saw it, the immediate word that came to mind was smarmy. Yes, that's the impression I got from the picture. 

I don’t know the first thing about the man. No, not completely true. I have a vague memory of hearing something some weeks ago about the house he lives in and something to do with the mortgage. Nothing else.

The next poster was that of Social Democrats Sarah Durcan. Again it was a mugshot and all I can remember from the poster are her unusual-looking glasses and her lipstick.

I saw a poster of the Aontù candidate Mairéad Tóibín. Nothing special about her picture and when I saw the name I thought of Niall Tóibín and was wondering might she be related to the late actor.

My last poster on my seven kilometre walk was that of the Fianna Fáil candidate, Deirdre Conroy. 

Nothing special or unusual about her picture. But I was reminded about how she was in the news some weeks ago for not being too kind to someone who was cooking in her kitchen And at the time there was some sort of hullabaloo about it all.

I was walking with a friend and we had a discussion about the posters. I came home and began to think about election posters and democracy.

I’m growing more and more confused about democracy as we currently operate it.

Maybe I’m missing something.