Mr. Enda Falvey:

Our role here as well is to look at some of the facts before we move anything in any particular direction. I wish to make one or two points that might be relevant. The Senator spoke about information at the poll. There is the statement for the information of voters that is passed by the Oireachtas, which is available at a poster in polling stations. That information is available to people as they vote if they wish to read it.

With regard to the wording used, we must be particularly careful because there are constitutional constraints that will have to be borne in mind. If one looks at the words used in Articles 46 and 47 of the Constitution, they give very little manoeuvre for changing what one might put on a ballot paper without being subject to some type of legal action. Article 46.2° refers to "Every proposal for an amendment of this Constitution..." - note the word "amendment" - and 46.3° refers to "An Act to amend the Constitution", while 46.5° refers to "a proposal for the amendment of this Constitution". Against that background it is very difficult to come up with a question that might pass legal muster other than the one that is there, "Do you approve of the proposal to amend the Constitution?" It is quite constraining. It is part of our job to point out these difficulties to the committee, so they are taken into account in its consideration of what it believes must be done.

On the point about research and the UK research, it is quite instructive to look at them. The Senator said the UK does not have referenda, or does not have them very often. That is indeed true, but it is facing one about its membership of the EU and Scotland is also facing a referendum about its proposal to break away from the UK union. Quite extensive research has been done in both areas regarding the wording. It is interesting to see it because it reflects some of the difficulties that can arise with regard to the use of language. The European proposal started as, "Do you think that the United Kingdom should be a member of the European Union?". This was the initial question but it was found to be a bad question. It appears fairly straightforward to me, per the average Joe Soap; I do not know what the Senator thinks of it. It is asking whether one wishes to be in the European Union or not. However, they found two things wrong with that. They found that the phrase "do you think" should be changed to "should" for a number of intellectual reasons that we need not go into here. Then they encountered difficulty with the phrase "the United Kingdom should be a member of the European Union". The difficulty was that some people did not realise that the UK is already a member of the European Union, so how was that to be addressed? It had to be put into a neutral phrase, "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?"

I mention these to show there are immense difficulties and it is very complex to come up with a wording that will keep everybody right.