INDEPENDENT TD PETER Mathews has rejected suggestions that he is using his old party colours in his new election campaign posters.
Mathews has erected a poster at a bus stop on Ballinteer Avenue in Dublin 16, listing his areas of interest under a banner of “working for you”.
The poster uses a blue and yellow colour scheme, similar to how Mathews’ posters appeared when he was in Fine Gael.
He resigned from the party in October 2013, after previously being expelled from the parliamentary party for voting against the Protection of Life During Pregnancy legislation.
Mathews then joined other expelled TDs in the Reform Alliance, but did not later join Renua.
Fine Gael councillor and general election candidate Josepha Madigan has said members of the public in the Dublin-Rathdown constituency could be left scratching their heads over Mathews’ new poster. She told TheJournal.ie:
It’s very confusing for voters as he is not a Fine Gael candidate but an independent.
“I am not at all happy about it but I believe there is very little I can do at this stage. He has clearly used the design from 2011 election and substituted independent for Fine Gael.”
However, Mathews has rejected this accusation, describing it as a “totally new creation”:
The design is different, the construction and the assembly of colours. Anyone with an eye for art will see.
He told this website that the poster was defaced, with a line put through independent and “Fine Gael, don’t vote for this man” written in its place. Mathews has since removed the graffiti.
“It’s not quite the same yellow [used in the poster],” he continued, adding that the division between the colours is also different and that he “achieved a completely different poster”.
I was very good at those spot-the-difference competitions. I won a prize.
- additional reporting by Hugh O’Connell.
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