Mr. Séamus Dooley:

Deputy Stanley asked for my comment on the electoral commission. That was a general comment. After every election, and usually on the morning of the election, Deputies and Senators receive phone calls from people who are not on the register. It is a mystery to me, as someone who has worked as a journalist for many years, that the simple issue of the modern compiling of a register has not been addressed. Similarly, a referendum commission is established immediately after the writ is moved, and a heavy burden of work is done in a short period of time around transfer of information.

Equally, there was reference already to the inconsistency in the rules governing the print media and the printing of posters and, in the case of online media, no rules at all. It seems to me that it is a peculiarly Irish way of doing business in trying to address the issue with many different pieces rather than one structural review. In that context, the idea of a permanent electoral commission which could look at all of these things, including governing rules on a technology-neutral basis, would be a good idea. Dr. Michael Foley is right - the Commission on the Newspaper Industry was technology neutral in that it just did not recognise its existence.