A

As the seemingly never-ending Eight Amendment debate rumbles on, one aspect of the whole chaotic scene is a particular source of annoyance: the ubiquitous campaign posters. People on both sides are slating the other’s billboards and public adverts, with the Yes campaign especially critical of the alleged misinformation being spread by the Pro Life brigade. But, whatever about the content, it’s the sheer volume of these posters that I have a gripe with.

I recently travelled by road to Donegal and by the end of the trip I had the images seared into my brain. Foetus, YES, mother and child, Mary Lou McDonald, foetus YES, mother and child, Mary Lou McDonald. It was non-stop. I understand that it’s an important issue, but do we really need to be beaten over the head with it? One particular stretch of road near Kerry Airport has a row of posters that are so numerous and so close together that trying to read them would genuinely induce carsickness.

As I mentioned last week, I’ll be voting ‘yes’ but you would have to seriously question the thinking behind one of Sinn Féin’s ads. A big photo of Mary Lou McDonald’s head? As my father would say, what has that got to do with the price of milk? Maybe they’re trying to associate her face with the Yes campaign in the hopes that they’re on to a winner. It’s a bold move. And a strange one, too.

Then you have the whole issue surrounding the illegal removal of these signs. Labour say they put up around 80 ‘yes’ posters in Limerick over the past few weeks, and roughly half of those had been taken down. “This is just purely trying to suppress democracy and I would go so far as to say it smacks of fascism,” said Jan O’Sullivan TD.

Fianna Fáil TD for Waterford Mary Butler has also said that she had seen a "huge ‘no’ poster" torn down on the way to Dungarvan over the weekend.

"They cost a lot of money to put up. The tearing down of posters whether they are Yes or No is obviously not the right way to deal with this issue, people are entitled to put up their posters," she said.

Whatever about fascism or the law, the mysterious poster bandits might do us all a favour and take down the rest of them as well.