The Poster Ban That Never Went Away is Back Again

dublin | rights, freedoms and repression | news report

Friday December 01, 2006 20:14

by Seán Ryan and John Kelly of CFSD

This coming Monday, DCC will meet in Dublin Castle and vote to BAN POSTERING once again

Page 1 of the Protocol

Once again the people of Ireland, and of Dublin are being attacked, by the paper pushers in Dublin City Council. This time, despite having had it spelled out for them in very clear terms, they are again aided and abetted by elected officials.

This coming Monday, the 4th of December, DCC elected officials will congregate and congeal in Dublin Castle, to once again defile the Irish Constitution, Irish law and European Human Rights law, to vote to renew the ban on the publication of PUBLIC NOTICES from streets in Dublin.

A meeting was called recently, it was slyly billed as an environmental meeting and five elected representatives from Dublin City Council attended.

On the table at that meeting was a proposal to re-introduce the ban on the publication of PUBLIC NOTICES. A Document with the heading: ‘Draft Protocol for Authorisation to Erect Temporary Posters/Notices on Dublin City Council Property to Advertise Public Meetings/Events’ was entered for discussion and eventually put to a vote. There were 24 separate rules listed on this document. I’m including the two pages of these rules as photographs with this article. Please note also, that public property is feloniously mislabelled as ‘Dublin City Council Property.’

Five elected representatives voted on bringing this protocol forward and having DCC vote on it this coming Monday. Four out of the Five elected representatives present voted ‘yes,’ to re-introducing the poster ban (not that it ever went away). It’s interesting how fast a vote to impose a ban on postering can reach the table in DCC, and yet it took approximately a year for the vote to lift the ban to reach the table. This is despite elected officials like, Dermot Lacey of Labour swearing that he did everything in his power to get the vote to lift the ban onto the table – and on this site too.

Emer Costello of Labour – Voted yes to a permanent ban on FREE SPEECH.

Bronwen Maher of the Green Party – Voted yes to a permanent ban on the right to FREE ASSEMBLY.

Tom Stafford of Fianna Fáil – Voted yes to a permanent ban on the PUBLIC’S RIGHT TO KNOW.

Pascal O’Donaghue of Fine Gael – Voted yes to SLANDERING our HISTORY. If this blueshirt had had his way, the 1916 proclamation would have been ‘cleaned’ from the GPO., and ended up in a dustbin, before anyone had a chance to read it.

Joan Collins, Independent – Voted no, and was the only elected representative, who’d previously expressed concern about this issue, that gave a damn about whose interests she represents.

From Monday on, if this abomination is passed – MISSING PERSON posters will not be allowed to carry a photograph of the missing person and their concerned relatives and friends will have to cough up a €300 deposit to to seek help from the public. People who wish to erect posters will have to sign a document, to enable some rights and remove others, that pre-exist the document and the need to sign it. Posters will not be allowed on, O’Connell Street, Grafton Street, Henry Street, Merrion Square, Fitzwilliam Square and Mountjoy Square.

To add even more insult to injury, the following was tacked onto the bottom of the Protocol: ‘This Protocol does not apply to an event promoted or carried on for commercial purposes.’

As if we didn’t know this already.