Dr. Adrian Kavanagh:

I thank the Chairman and the committee for inviting me to attend. The committee has heard from a number of political science academics. My specialty is geography so I will not be giving the same level of detail as people like Dr. Theresa Reidy or Professor David Farrell offered. I have put together a few ideas about what I regard as important for the proposed electoral commission. I have grouped them under the headings of Reform, Independence, Information, Value for Money and Administration-Organisation.

Under the heading of reform I would argue that the main driver or function of the proposed commission - its raison d'être- should be to focus on a reform. There is a lot of talk about the importance of a commission in terms of improving the quality of the electorate register but in my view the commission could be most valuable in the area of electoral reform which could involve looking at various innovations for improving electoral practice or the sharing of electoral information and also as a body that is able to learn from international precedents of good practice. It should also be able to learn from good ideas about elections or improving the electoral process that it gains from the Irish public or from experts in the field, be they academics, experts in the area of elections, such as Mr. Sean Donnelly, for example, or people who are petitioners in the field, such as people who work in the area of electoral administration or politicians themselves.

An electoral commission would be important because, as the past few years have shown, in instances or accusations of partisan bias it can be very difficult to get certain electoral reform ideas across or passed. I refer to what has happened in the past few years such as the Seanad referendum which failed for different reasons. Most recently we had the collapse of the referendum to reduce the age of presidential election candidates. In part I would argue the main problem in that case was that these were represented or misrepresented sometimes, as trying to get too much power for the Dáil, for example. However, ideas put forward by an independent body, in theory at least, those concerns about partisan bias should be able to be overcome that might otherwise nix good ideas about electoral reform.

The electoral commission would also be able to drive certain reform efforts from an organisational perspective, in the way that other bodies might not be able to do. One area that I suspect will become a major issue will be a focus on the area of voting rights for the Irish diaspora. I was talking to the European affairs committee about this topic a few months ago. I suspect this issue may become fairly significant with regard to electoral reform in the future. Certain electoral reform efforts may require a centralised independent body to push them through over and above what can be done by a body that is more tied in to the Government or to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government or the local authorities or local bodies.

The next heading relates to the independence of a commission. An independent commission should, in theory, be better placed to drive or push a reform agenda and get public acceptance for it than might be the case if it were seen to be a policy pushed by certain politicians or by the Government. If it is decided to go down the route of having an electoral officer or an elections ombudsman or elections Czar to head up this body, the main aspect to ensure the independence of the commission is that the leadership should be, in so far as practical, drawn from outside the political sector or the administrative elite.

There are two significant issues relating to independence and it is a question of how can a commission's ideas become policy. All a commission can do in driving new ideas for improving electoral practice is to put forward proposals. It will require some thought as to how to turn proposals into policy. Generally, I suspect, that the best model is that proposals from the commission should go before the Seanad and the Dáil for decision, with the scope that these can be rejected because I would suspect there may be certain proposals from the commission that might not work when they are examined. However, these should only be rejected when there is very good reason to do so.

The briefing document raised the question of engagement with politicians, whether politicians should be involved in the commission. I would argue that there is a place for politicians or people from the general political sector in the commission but perhaps in the form of an advisory panel instead of having politicians on the commission. An advisory panel of politicians could debate and discuss issues with the commission. Certain expert knowledge can only be had from politicians, whether Deputies, Senators or councillors or local party workers. People working in politics have certain in-depth expert information that others do not have and certainly academics do not have it. This would be a very good scope to draw on the political knowledge. I suggest an advisory panel made up of politicians or people from party headquarters.

I refer to the importance of accountability. It was suggested that the commission should produce reports.

A precedent in New Zealand was referred to where the commission must always produce a report on the administration of elections within months of an election taking place.

Information is an important element. Dr. Theresa Reidy, who appeared before the committee on an earlier occasion, spoke about the possibility of an electoral commission being established before the next election. There are certain things a new commission could not do in a short period of time but one thing it could do quickly is to work on getting electoral information out to people. I had a quick look at the British electoral commission's webpage yesterday and it gives details on how to register on the front of its webpage. If one wanted to get that information in Ireland, one would need to go to a number of websites, including the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government website, the Standards in Public Office Commission website, a local authority website, a political party website and so on. Getting that information out would be an important function for an electoral commission. The commission could work on that very early in the day.

One of the first things a commission could do would be have a one-stop-shop with information on the electoral process and important statistics on elections to hand so that the public could quickly access it. That is being done on websites, such as Mr. Seán Donnelly's electionsireland.org, and my own website. This would probably take away all our business but it is probably for the best.

As regards other aspects relating to information, the commission should be involved in carrying out research into better electoral practice and so on and there may be scope for funding PhD scholarships for such research. Importantly, the commission should also be involved in voter education programmes with the funding directed at voter education programmes, focusing particularly on areas or groups which tend to have low turnouts either for specific elections, for example, in Donegal for a referendum, or generally, such as inner city populations, younger voters and so on.

I would like to make two further brief points as there are others here with better opinions on this subject. With regard to value for money, centralisation and economies of scale may work. On the other hand, as we have seen in the past, new initiatives have often produced false economies of scale and the possibility of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I would be careful about and would argue against a new electoral commission trying to reinvent the wheel from stage one. The best practice is probably to see what is already there and examine how a new commission could link with these different bodies.

On administration, the best model might be an electoral commission body. Instead of the Standards in Public Office Commission and the Referendum Commission, the new electoral commission should be an umbrella grouping tying together these different bodies with the main role of the chief electoral officer or electoral Ombudsman being to link up with the different bodies involved in different parts of electoral practice.