INDEPENDENT PRESIDENTIAL hopeful Seán Gallagher has made a final appeal to his fellow candidates for the Áras to produce a common election leaflet which he says will save the taxpayer over €10 million.
Having appealed to the six other candidates on Twitter last Thursday, Gallagher last night emailed them calling on them to produce a common election leaflet which would go to every voter in the country as opposed to their own individual leaflets.
Gallagher reckons that this will save over €10 million. He bases this on the fact that every An Post subsidised mailshot to each of the 3.1 million voters on the electoral register costs the State €1.6 million with seven candidates taking the bill to over €11 million.
It’s understood that Dana Rosemary Scallon’s campaign may be receptive to the idea and is expected to issue a statement later today but so far none of the other five candidates have indicated their willingness to get involved.
“I don’t understand why no one has responded to my repeated calls to save the taxpayer money by doing a common leaflet. The savings are obvious but the silence is deafening,” Gallagher said in a statement.
The unlikelyhood of all candidates being in favour of the idea means that election leaflets for all seven candidates, including Gallagher, are likely.
However a spokesperson for the Department of Environment said that candidates were under “no compulsion” to avail of the State subsidy for leaflets.
A spokesperson for the Gallagher campaign could not confirm if the candidate would or would not be issuing campaign leaflets but noted the decision not to put posters on lamp posts and further noted the importance of a leaflet as a communication tool with voters.
Asked if in a situation one other candidate was in favour of the idea, could Gallagher and that candidate come together to produce a joint leaflet, the spokesperson appeared to rule this out, citing legislation.
However, a spokesperson for the Department of Environment said there was no legislation which prevented this under the Presidential Elections Act 1993.
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