Mr. Seán Donnelly:

I thank the Chairman for the invitation to appear before the committee. People like me are often referred to psephologists. The word comes from the Greek word psephos, pronounced with a silent P, which means pebble because in ancient Greece they used to vote by casting pebbles - they may be using something else in the next few weeks in Greece. Psephology is a branch of political science that deals with the study and scientific analysis of elections.

I have a fair bit of experience of our elections. I have written ten books since 1991 on all of our elections from general elections, by-elections, European elections, Presidential elections to referenda. I will give a few figures on our elections. There have been 31 general elections in this State since 1922, which was the first proportional representation, PR, election. There have been 131 by-elections, 28 Seanad elections, eight European elections, seven Presidential elections, 39 referenda and 24 local elections. In all there have been 268 elections, so we have a fair bit of experience of the electoral process.

I will refer to my experience in this area over the last 30 years. I have encountered four problems, in particular. One is the lack of overall control. No one is in charge of the overall system. There is no consistency and the left hand does know what the right hand is doing and is not particularly interested. The Internet ethos of sharing information has not permeated to these bodies. The information is power ethos overrides the transparency aspiration. The register of electors is probably the most talked about item at this committee. It is well documented in the committee's hearings and I will come back to it. It is obviously a big item. The election results, because of the attitude that prevails, are very deficient. The system relies on people like myself and others to come up with election results, but that is not good enough.

I will move on to some possible solutions to these problems. Regarding the lack of transparency and lack of overall control, the establishment of an electoral commission will solve that problem overnight. On the second item, the sharing of information, that requires a cultural change and I do not think it can happen. That is why we need an electoral commission. I have dealt a good deal with the councils in regard to the register. Any time I want information, it takes up to 34 telephone calls to get it, or many more than that by the time I eventually get it. The first response I get to a request for information is, "What do you want that for?" When I telephone the Central Statistics Office, CSO, the staff there cannot do enough for me. It is that cultural change that needs to take place. One item of information I look for is the breakdown of the electoral register - the way the books are structured, for example. When I telephone to ask for that information, the response I get is, "No. We do not have that." When I say they should have it, they say that they do not have it. When I say they used to sell the register, or parts of the register, and, therefore, they must have a list of the books with the number of voters on it, the response is, "Is that what you are talking about? No, we do not have that." When I say they have enumerators who update the register and who are paid on the basis of the number of people on the register and that they must have lists of them, the response is, "Is that what you are talking about?" There is an issue in that they do not know what I and others want and they are not particularly interested in helping us.

Moving on to the register of electors, there are three items to consider, the boundary report for elections, the register of electors and the census of population, for which the Central Statistics Office has responsibility. The latest census was in 2011 when there were 4,588,252 people in Ireland. The building block of the census is the electoral division.The building block of the boundary report is also the electoral division. The register of electors is now in the hands of three city councils and 28 county councils. They deal with the electorate. Their building block is the polling district and I have not been able to find out how it came about or what it means. We have a Tower of Babel with the electoral division as the building block of the census and of the Boundary Commission, which forms the boundaries for the elections, and then with having something different in the register of electors. We cannot get the two to co-ordinate.

There is also the lack of an overarching body. Two city councils, Dublin City Council and Cork City Council, do it right but the others councils do not. It is a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. It creates a problem when it comes to doing any analysis, because it is a Tower of Babel, and there is no need for it.

I gave an example in my submission of how one can compare the electorate and break it down into these small electoral divisions, EDs, but even taking a local electoral area, and I have used the example of Dublin Bay South for the next election, it is possible to compare data. I also included the number who are able to vote, the number who are Irish and the number who are over the age of 18. The figure comes out at about 70%, which means 30% cannot vote.

One could use the figure, working down to the electoral divisions, EDs, and it would immediately show where there are too many voters registered and all sorts of issues which I have found over the years. For example, if one applies it to the last census, the percentage comes out at 71%. In Dublin city, it is 61% and in Ulster, it is as high as 77%.

The population and the census are the same thing and there should not be a discrepancy between the two. The CSO is an excellent body, which produces excellent reports and is very helpful. Such an organisation could take over the electoral register. The CSO has the expertise to overcome the problem of PPS numbers. We will have a census next year and it would be convenient if there was a note from the Government asking the CSO to form the census so as to ascertain the number of people who should be eligible to vote. The census has a grouping of ages zero to 19. We would like a grouping of people aged zero to 18. Why is it 19? What does 19 mean? I do not know. It has no significance, whereas the age of 18 has the significance that one can vote. This information is available from the CSO on payment of €50. The model is there, the CSO is there and the census is there with all the details we need. I can leave the duplication problem to other experts.

Another major gap in the system is election results, which are difficult to get. They do not see it as part of trying to get election results. During general elections in Italy, results are displayed on a big screen in the local piazza as it is happening. One would be lucky to get the information from the councils six months after the event. We have not got the local election results yet. We are in the Internet age and it has changed everything else, but the Internet has not changed our electoral system. It has had no effect. When I started out, information was posted out. When I tried to get the local election results, I was told they only had the big sheets that were displayed at the election count and they would have to post them to me. That was the system.

During the Presidential election I spoke on the radio at lunch time on the Saturday complaining about the system. Claire Byrne said she had to go over to one of the Dublin counts in the new Convention Centre. The RTE reporter said they could not get the fax machine working. Claire Byrne told the reporter she was having to restrain Seán Donnelly and that I was about to fall off the chair. It is typical. We are in an age when everything is about statistics and analysis. We see it in American football, rugby and GAA. A statistic was given that Michael Murphy of my county, Donegal, had touched the ball 50 times. Is it good or bad? Paul O'Connell, playing for Ireland, made 16 tackles. Is it good or bad? Sporting people know it is very good. However, if the turnout in Kerry at 6 p.m. on the day of voting in the last election was 40%, is it good or bad? We do not know because we have nothing to compare it with. Statistical analysis is being used everywhere.

A few years ago, I came across a book entitled Slater's National Commercial Directory of Ireland. It broke down the country into baronies, parishes, statute acres, annual value, population, families, population per family and education. I thought it must be very recent, but it was produced in 1846 in Manchester. It puts us in the shade. It provided the pre-Famine figures, when the population was 8.175 million. I did an analysis of it, and an average family had 5.6 people. In the last census, there were 2.8 people per family. If we returned to 5.6 people per family, we would return to the pre-Famine population. One could argue that contraception had as significant an effect on our population as the Famine had.

The tally holds a revered position in Irish politics, although it is over-rated. Counting votes is not rocket science and it is no big deal that the result is produced a few hours before the official result. In 1994, I set the task of doing a full European tally in Dublin. People said it could not be done. It was before Microsoft Windows 95 and the Internet. There were approximately 1,300 boxes and to put them into a computer would take approximately 22 hours, whereas we had approximately four. The obvious solution was to get a number of computers. I drove around Dublin and got 12 computers and we had one master computer and the old floppy disks. Every hour we stopped the count and produced a tally. There was a photocopier for the parties. All the media received it and it worked like a charm. This was 30 years ago.

In 2005, there were two by-elections, one in Kildare for Charlie McCreevy's seat and one in Meath for John Bruton's seat. We decided to go one better and see if we could put the tally on the Internet. We put it on the Internet and on people's mobile phones as it was happening. All the parties decided to do their own tallies and they passed them on to me. They hardly differed. One has to go to two decimal places to get any differences. The Fianna Fáil tally for the Fine Gael candidate was 33.98%, whereas the Fine Gael tally was 34%, Sinn Féin 33.95%, my tally was 34.05% and the final result was 34.13%. The difference was less than 0.1%. It shows what individual people can do. What could be done with the powers of the State supporting it? I feel passionate about the electoral commission. Given that election day is a slow news day, RTE sends correspondents all over the country to check in on polling stations and ask how many ballot papers have been given out. One phone call from each polling station to an Internet site would provide hourly updates on every polling station. Compare what was achieved in 1846 with what we are doing now.

Electronic voting is the elephant in the room. I was one of the few who publicly supported it. All the political parties supported it in the Dáil. While electronic voting was not a problem, electronic counting became a problem. Everybody found the voting machines worked well. Had there been an electoral commission, the debacle would not have ensued, it would not have become a political issue and we would have saved ourselves over €50 million. These matters are important. The validity of the arguments raised by the computer buffs could easily have been checked during the following election by selecting a few constituencies and feeding all the ballot papers into the electronic voting machines to see if it differed hugely. If one entered three to five complete ballots, it would have come close. We are not sure of the present system. I have never seen a recount produce the exact same figures as the original count. It became a political football and nobody wants to touch it. I believe it will be touched.

I have outlined the main deficiencies in our electoral management system and the necessity of establishing an electoral commission. Some people say these things are not important. The last referendum was supposed to be the 34th amendment to the Constitution, but it was the 29th. Before it, only 28 referenda had been passed by the people. Previously, if a referendum was not passed, the number was brought forward, for example, there were two attempts to pass the third and fourth amendment.

Then there were the eleventh and twelfth amendments and there were three amendments on the one day, two of which were passed. There was another amendment about judges and calling them to heel which did not actually pass through the Dáil. Therefore, in the next referendum, whenever it is held, it will be on the thirty-sixth amendment, but it would actually be the thirtieth amendment to be passed. That is sloppy. Imagine the Americans pleading the fifth amendment and wondering whether it was the sixth, the seventh or the eight amendment. Perhaps somebody might make a case against this sometime.

There are four recommendations; an electoral commission should be established with responsibility for all aspects of the electoral system, including voter and party registration; there should be reviews of boundary divisions; there should be the organisation and running of various elections and referenda; and there should be the publication of results and analysis. A national register of electors should be set up based on electoral divisions as per the census and boundary reviews rather than polling districts as occurs at present. The 2006 census form should be altered to allow for calculation of the proportion of the population allowed to vote. This is not available at present but could be. The register should be the responsibility of the electoral commission but could be contracted out to a body such as the CSO which carries out summary work in compiling the census every five years. There will be a census next year. It would also have the expertise to tackle the ongoing problem of voter duplication. A comprehensive website should be set up containing all relevant data associated with the electoral process, including the register of electors and real-time election results, rather than being provided six months later. It should include all historical results. In other words, it should contain the data contained in my ten books on the ElectionsIreland.orgwebsite. The issue of electronic voting should be revisited which, as happened in the case of a few recent referenda, might get through at the second attempt. It would bring us into the Internet age of instant and much more detailed results. It would bring to an end the tally which has been overrated.