Another Laois County Council election candidate has expressed his frustration after he discovered that some of his posters have been removed in recent days.
Following on from Portlaoise Sinn Féin candidates Cllr Caroline Dwane-Stanley and Maria McCormack saying that a number of their posters were taken on Wednesday, Independent Dom Dunne, who is also running in the Portlaoise area, contacted LaoisToday to say that he has also has noticed posters gone missing.
Dunne, who ran for Renua in the 2019 elections and was only pipped to the final seat by Thomasina Connell by 53 votes, says he had posters removed on the roundabout at John Adams Garage on the Stradbally Road, at Sheffield Cross, near the dump on the Mountmellick Road and on the Abbeyleix Road.
“I’d to go an replace the first few that were taken,” he said. “I paid good money out of my own pocket but I’m putting up no more now. It’s costing me a fortune.
“What do people get out of doing that,” he asked.
“If you put posters up illegally and the council remove them, they’ll drop them back to you and you’ll get a letter from the council saying why they were removed. But that’s not the case here.”
Dunne got 379 first preference votes in 2019, to be ninth of 16 candidates after the first count. He duly went all the way to the 14th count, finishing on 743 votes behind Connell’s 796.
“I’m getting on well but you just don’t know,” he said of this campaign. “People say ‘you’re an Independent and you’ve a great chance’ but you’ll never know until the day itself.”
In all, there are currently 18 candidates in the Portlaoise Municipal District set to battle it out for the seven seats.
Separately, a selection of posters in the Mountmellick/Borris-in-Ossory Municipal District were vandalised on Wednesday night/Thursday morning when the faces of candidates were cut out.
The Local Elections take place across the country three weeks from today, on Friday, June 7.
Candidates have until 12 noon tomorrow to confirm that they are running.
SEE ALSO – Check out all our 2024 Local Election coverage here
