The financial hit of Jim Gavin bowing out
Fianna Fáil unlikely to get the €250k back from the state they would have if Jim Gavin had run
If nothing else, Jim Gavin dropping out of the residential race will be a financial hit to Fianna Fáil.
They will likely have banked and budgeted for him hitting the threshold where the state will reimburse you for your expenses. Get 12.5% of the vote in a presidential election, and the state will reimburse you up to €250,000 of vouched for expenses (up from €200k last time).
And these elections are expensive - going through the returns from 2018 and 2011 (you can see them on SIPO here), we can see likely costs for things that will already have been paid for:
- Posters: MDH spent €75k on these last time, Liadh Ni Riada spent €79k
- Leaflets: MDH spent about €53k on flyers, LNR recorded €84k in election materials, and in 2011 Sean Gallagher spent €43k on printing
- Photos: lets not forget smaller things like photoshoots - Gallagher recorded €18k for this
- Digital ads: when I checked last night Gavin was spending about €10k a week on ads in the week to last Thursday - that doesn't include production or agency costs, staff time, all those drones etc...
We'll only know the real financial hit in a few months when the parties each have to submit their returns to SIPO.
I notice, incidentally, that the social media accounts of Gavin have been deleted - and that Meta have also deleted any info of what was spent, while running this insane claim:
This doesn't bode well for when they cut off ads (and possibly but hopefully not the archive) this Friday...
PS - The Gist has a good piece out this morning on the scandal that brought Gavin down
ICYMI:
Liz Carolan
Liz Carolan
Liz Carolan
