One of the offending posters in Stradbrook, Blackrock, south Dublin

A PERSON (OR persons) unknown is currently posting an election candidate for south Dublin’s election posters for him, months before they’re actually supposed to do so.

Frank Cronin, former chief executive of Newstalk radio, is running as a Renua candidate for Dun Laoghaire in the next election, widely expected to happen in February.

Cronin held an election meeting on 20 November and printed and posted 200 campaign posters for the occasion. He promptly removed the posters from the locality per election rules.

Unfortunately for Frank it seems that quite a few of the posters were taken without his consent at the time – because they’ve been popping up all around south Dublin since the start of this month, meaning the election hopeful is having to run around taking them down as soon as they go up.

“I have no idea what’s going on actually,” Cronin told TheJournal.ie.

At first I thought we’d simply missed a few when we were taking them down. But now they’ve been going up since the start of December every couple of days.

We had one up in Shankill today, yesterday it was in Deansgrange. On St Stephen’s Day one went up outside Leopardstown racecourse.

Cronin has notified Dublin City Council as to what has been going on, as it is their litter act that is being breached.

Posters can only be erected within 30 days prior to an election polling date here. Once the polls have closed candidates have seven days to remove them.

“I don’t want to get fined, and I can’t help this,” he says.

Before I got involved in running this kind of thing would annoy me. It’s sloppy and unfair and I don’t want to do anything inappropriate. They’re an ugly thing.

Still Cronin has no idea who could be behind the postings.

“It’s an awful lot of effort to go to for a bit of craic,” he says.

I mean there’s nothing in it for anyone, unless they’re trying to embarrass me. I would certainly prefer that this wasn’t happening.

Read: Is this the first poster of the general election campaign?

Read: Should we limit the number of election posters candidates can have?