Irish Examiner view: Be transparent on fake pollsters

The practice did little to engender trust in the political process

The election count is the epitome of transparency, however, the practice of using fake pollsters, and, more tellingly, the parties’ reaction to being found out shows that we still have a long way to go when it comes to political transparency.

At a time when liberal democracies are under threat in many countries around the world, it is depressing to find that four of our own parties were engaged in the deeply cynical practice of using fake pollsters.

Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and the Green Party were all forced to admit their members had, at one point, pretended to be researchers in order to secretly survey voters. This follows another recent admission by Sinn Féin that it did not think it needed to inform people that their names, addresses and voting intentions were kept on a secret database.