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Brian Stephenson, founder of Candidates.ie with Annette Grealish, Project Manager, NoteCloud. Pic: Pauline Dennigan. No fee for repro
A TRALEE company has set up a new website which aims to significantly reduce the need for election posters.
The European and Local Elections take place on Friday, May 24 and candidates will erect an estimated half a million posters on telephone poles and lamp posts across the country.
Most of these posters will end up in landfill after the elections , so to try to solve this problem a new website called www.candidates.ie has been launched by NoteCloud, a small technology company based in Tralee.
The website aims to make it easier for voters to find out about the candidates contesting the elections.
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Commenting on the launch, NoteCloud founder Brian Stephenson said; “We are involved in a number of environment and community clean-up projects locally and the issue of election posters has been raised more than once. We decided to try to solve this by building a user-friendly online directory and inviting candidates to create profiles and give a little info about themselves and their ideas.”
Candidates.ie is described as a social business designed to promote, encourage and make positive social change. All revenues are reinvested into the business or used to start other social businesses.
“We run a number of other social businesses including www.learnfromleaders.ie and www.seeitsayit.ie and while we’ll never profit from these projects, we get a lot back that can’t be measured in financial terms. We’re also building a great work culture and making lots of friends,” added Stephenson.
It’s not rocket science!
Kerry County Council should allow each candidate / political party a limited number of election posters each (50 or 100) and also specify the poles and posts in specific areas that each candidate or political party can use.
This type of regulation would be more fair for the candidates / political parties, the community and the environment.