WHAT HAPPENS TO the tens of thousands of election posters after they are taken down from lamp posts across the country?

Designer Fergus O’Neill has decided to give them a longer shelf life than their featured candidates… by turning them into birdhouses. The posters are made with rain-proof material anyway so they are perfect shelter for feathered friends. O’Neill told TheJournal.ie that Fine Gael were particularly helpful and offered him as many Gay Mitchell posters as he has demand for, but that the other parties didn’t respond to his request. When they are finished they will look a little something like this:

The birdhouses cost €10 a pop and you can buy them here. O’Neill says that he can also make birdhouses from Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Labour, Green Party, Sinn Féin and independent candidate posters from the February general election campaign. He has already been using those posters as packaging material when sending out framed prints to customers. He told TheJournal.ie:

During the general election I realised the posters were the ideal material to send out framed print orders. I’ve sent my prints out all over the country packaged in general election posters and not one has come back broken. It’s also put the individual on the poster to an actual use.

I got the idea after an Eamon Gilmore poster hit my car in high winds last January. It was a bit shocking and I was a bit annoyed (it broke my aerial). I contacted the Labour party on Twitter and by email but they never repaired by aerial. So I used the poster to package my screen prints.

O’Neill is the designer who came up with the ‘Keep going, sure it’s grand’ prints you might have seen dotted around the place over the past year. We’re thinking someone in TheJournal.ie is going to get a ‘Made in Cork’ cotton tote in the office Secret Santa draw – he’s been complaining that he has nowhere to keep his new Cork passport.

The rest of O’Neill’s clever products are available to view here.

This is how he packages them using old general election posters: