Seán Ryan has been issued a major strike for breaching the rules of the Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) elections.
Ryan will not be allowed to campaign online from 9am to 9pm tomorrow. In addition, 15 t-shirts have been confiscated by the Electoral Commission for tonight’s hustings in Trinity Hall.
The Electoral Commission decided to give the strike after allegations were made in Trinity News that Ryan was offering a €300 bar tab for anyone who voted for him. The alleged offer was made by a member of Ryan’s campaign team in a Freshers GAA WhatsApp group.
In a post on his campaign’s Facebook page, Ryan reiterated what members of his campaign team said to The University Times this morning, that he was “totally unaware of this behaviour until contacted for comment by Trinity News about it”.
The action breaks Schedule 3 of the TCDSU constitution, which specifically forbids messages being sent in group chats and outlaws any form of gift-giving to students in order to receive votes.
This is the first major strike for Ryan, though he has been sanctioned twice by the Electoral Commission, once when a member of his campaign team shared a post in a Facebook group before campaigning officially started and another time when his campaign put a poster on a non-union board.
Ryan is one of the four candidates in the tightly contested presidential race. A three day poll conducted by The University Times revealed that just one per cent of the vote will decide if Shane De Rís or Ryan will become president, after the votes of the other two candidates are reallocated. De Rís is likely to receive 36.6 per cent of first preferences while Ryan to set to collect 32.4 per cent. The race is currently too close to call for either candidate.
Ryan declined to comment further on the issue when asked by The University Times.
