Caít Keane (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Like Senator Brennan, I apologise as I was detained in the Seanad. The delegation is very welcome. This debate was had before. The recommendations in the Geary Institute report give some food for thought on how we should proceed.

Some very good submissions have been made. A very good feature of this committee is that it can consider submissions by outside bodies, academics and others. Given that politicians are in the middle of the issue, they may be the worst people to consider it. Therefore, outside views and views from academia are useful. I thank the people who are not here today who made submissions. I will not mention any names.

I fully agree on the views expressed regarding PPS numbers. The savings would be minimal if they were taken from local authorities. I would like to see an analysis to determine what the savings would be, if anything. I was a member of South Dublin County Council for 25 years. That local authority was one of the first to become very modern in its use of IT. Local authorities are now well able to become even more modern and link in with any relevant national body.

Lest the witnesses get me wrong, I must welcome the formation of the electoral commission. It is very necessary but it is not necessary for the full role of local authorities to be subsumed under it. The roles of each body should be defined absolutely. I have spoken all my life — I will not change now — about the devolution of functions to local authorities. Too many tasks are centralised and we must have devolution of functions. Who better to know people on the ground than those in local authorities? Senator Brennan referred to duplication. The rate collectors of long ago knew everybody. Staff in local authorities and local councillors are knowledgeable and there is all the local information. If there is too much centralisation, all that will be lost.

I note there was a good submission from the Association of Irish Local Government, AILG, on these issues, including on what would be lost if everything was to be centralised. Some things should and must be centralised. A single co-ordinating body is a necessity. Other than that, administration can be managed locally but oversight should be centralised. In my experience, everything in local government has been above reproach.

There are issues concerning household versus individual registration. The PPS number has to be used because there is no other identifiable method. However, we ran into trouble in using it before when it was recommended that it be used for water charges purposes. It must be held for a specific purpose and this is such a purpose.

The accuracy of the electoral register is often called into question. Councillors, Deputies and Senators have pointed to inaccuracies. It should be publicised that it is not necessary to de-register in one county before a person registers in another. One can move house from one county to another, which is a feature of greater mobility. I compliment the checktheregister.iewebsite which has moved on a lot from where it was when I started off.

The link with birth, marriage and death records is necessary. When a person dies, if a red flag were to pop up, the record could be removed from the electoral register. The rip.iewebsite provides another record. I attended Eoghan Culligan's funeral and it put everything into perspective.

Enhancing participation in elections should be a national issue. If the electoral commission did not enhance participation, it should be sacked straightaway.

The absence of centralised data is a problem. I receive emails to obtain data for tallies. The commission should have a role in that regard. These are historical records, but it is left to Mr. Seán Donnelly in elections.orgor Mr. Chris Took in electionsireland.orgto provide them. Incidentally, I could not open Mr. Took's submission because of the way it had been saved in WARC, rather than in a pdf file or Word. I will have to take up that matter with the IT unit. These websites do the work a national body should be doing in the case of historical election records. Their work should be aided because they know how to do it.

The Constituency Commission should remain because it is independent and does work that could not be left to others. SIPO should be amalgamated in some way with the commission because two bodies are not needed to do the work.

We should not throw the baby out with the bath water. We could lose more than we would gain by taking something away from local authorities. Local councils would do the work better if they had more IT staff and a good programme for checking the electoral register. I would be careful about centralising everything because we are seeking devolution.