General election candidates have not much more than 24 hours to remove the last of their campaign posters ahead of a midnight deadline on Friday.
Candidates whose posters are left up after 12am will face a fine of €150 per poster.
Under Irish litter law, campaign posters - including their plastic cable ties - must be removed within seven days of polling day. This means volunteers and party members will need to get out on Friday, March 4th to ensure all remaining election paraphernalia is gone by the end of the day.
According to a spokesman for the Department of the Environment, local authorities will implement the €150 fine on any candidates or political parties who leave their posters up after the cutoff deadline.
While litter law states that posters and their plastic cable ties must be removed within seven days of polling day, a number of concerned Irish Times readers have written to the paper in recent days complaining of cable ties being left on poles or discarded on the ground after posters are removed.
Colourful suggestion
One letter writer suggested using a system of coloured ties to ensure ownership of these pieces of plastic scattered around the streets could be identified.
A spokeswoman for the Green Party said a total of 4,000 posters had been printed by the party ahead of Election 2016.
These were erected on poles along with recycled posters from the last local elections in 2014. She said teams of party members and volunteers would be out around the State on Friday to ensure all the posters are removed by the deadline.
A spokesman for Labour said it would be up to individual candidates to ensure their posters come down through volunteer support or by employing contractors, adding an estimated 35,000 posters had been erected during the campaign.
A Fine Gael spokesman said a contractor had been hired to ensure all posters are down by Friday night.
Fianna Fáil has run a national poster campaign to ensure general party posters are removed by a contractor by the end of the week, while all 71 individual party candidates are responsible for removing their own posters, according to a spokesman.
Sinn Féin members are responsible for taking down their own posters, with up to 1,000 posters in each constituency.
Over-enthusiastic
A number of election candidates faced fines even before the 2016 campaign kicked off - after some over-enthusiastic volunteers erected posters before the Taoiseach had announced the date of the election.
Posters for former Labour TD Joanna Tuffy went up ahead of time in parts of Dublin Mid-West, while Renua’s Terence Flanagan’s posters appeared around parts of the Dublin Bay North constituency.
Storm Henry’s strong winds wreaked havoc on strategically placed stickers covering up candidates’ election pleas.
Dublin City Council failed to confirm whether or not candidates were fined for putting posters up early.
After the local and European elections in May 2014, Dublin local authorities issued more than 90 fines to political candidates who did not remove posters on time.
