Mr. Enda Falvey:

I will take the last point first. Both members referred to the spoiled votes. On this occasion the percentage of spoiled votes was well down on the number in the referendum on the abolition of Seanad Éireann. In fact, when one looks at polls taken together on the same day, this is the lowest percentage of invalid votes ever. That said, there is no clear relationship. To be fair, if those figures were higher I would be saying there is no clear relationship. It comes back to the original committee concern about confusion about the ballot paper. We have made changes to the ballot paper and it is nice to see that the figures are moving in the right direction. However, in the European Parliament elections there were higher figures altogether and there is no question of confusion there. We do not know why people spoil votes. Anecdotally, some people will be confused and some people will do it deliberately, but we do not know. I am not taking credit for a direct relationship between the improvement in the ballot paper and the figures, but it is encouraging to note it.

Deputy Wall mentioned the Bible and asked why it must be there. The Bible creates difficulties on a number of fronts. There were many complaints on the day about the presence of a Bible because some people might take offence at its presence. The Bible is there so that if a presiding officer feels that somebody should be asked to confirm their details, they can swear it on the Bible. However, there is no difficulty if one has no religious beliefs or if one does not wish to swear on the Bible. One can just make an affirmation to that effect. In our guidance we ask that 25% of people, on average, be checked for identity and that might lead to the use of a Bible for one reason or another. In a local community where many people know each other the need for the Bible in those cases should not arise because the personnel probably know many of the people who come before them.

One gets all sorts of opinions on the Irish and English issue. I always refer to Article 8 of the Constitution, which talks about their equal status. In fact, Irish is meant to have a greater status. It is very difficult for me to conceive of downgrading the Irish on a ballot paper. I am not saying I have a closed mind on it but that is my reasoning. On the specifics, when one looks at the ballot paper we used in the May referendums and compare it to the one used in the Seanad referendum, the gaps between the Irish and English were increased. We did so because the National Adult Literary Agency, NALA, and the National Council for the Blind of Ireland, NCBI, recommended to us that we make the gap as big as possible. We had the dilemma of making it as large as possible without making the ballot paper big and unwieldy, but there was an increase in the gap between the English and Irish on this occasion.

I will make two comments on the issue of removal from the electoral register. It is very frustrating and I can understanding how people would even feel embarrassed when they turn up at the polling station where they have voted for many years, and where they might even be well known to the presiding officer, but suddenly they are not on the list. It should not happen. People should not be removed from the list unless there is a good reason. Local authorities are asked, and indeed try, to maintain the register as best they can. At an operational level, it is far easier to keep somebody on the register than to remove them from it. The stories of people being removed from the register are obviously true but difficult to comprehend if there is no good reason for doing it. Unfortunately, when one turns up to vote, one is either on the list or not. Nothing can be done for the person at that stage, even though one has a moral right to vote and nobody wishes to disenfranchise anybody. The law states that one cannot the register at that point in the polling station. They are the facts and that is the law.