Irish Examiner view: Food for thought

Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe TD. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins Photos

In recent days we have learned a good deal about the spending of politicians at election time, from Paschal Donohoe’s posters to Sinn Féin’s hotel invoices.

There was a time when this unregulated field gave rise to many urban legends — not all of them legends, and many of them rural — but tighter regulation and greater transparency in the modern age mean the wilder excesses of election spending such as the porter levy immortalised by Breandán Ó hEithir are gone.