Professor David Farrell:

The Deputy asked many questions, and I hope I will be forgiven if I do not get through them all. For the 2016 study, the most recent study, we cobbled together what moneys we could find. We accessed whatever remaining research funds we had in our pots, collaborated with RTÉ, got a small bit of funding from the Oireachtas - I cannot remember which Department it came from - and ended up with somewhere between €50,000 and €60,000. This was highly inadequate. To provide a sense of that, part of this was the RTÉ exit poll, where the sample was split in three ways, meaning that we had samples of 1,000 each. However, the questionnaires were not able to speak across the piece. We have some questions in one part of the sample that do not allow us to look at the relationship with questions in other part of the sample. In addition, we commissioned RED C to carry out two telephone polls. Each of the samples in those telephone polls do not speak to the RTÉ samples, nor to each other. I apologise for being too technical, but we effectively ended up with five separate samples that do not speak to each other. We were able to generate a volume from that. We published a book a few months ago in conjunction with Manchester University Press, covering a number of interesting themes, including whether we are seeing the emergence of populism in Ireland. We are not, but there are perhaps hints that something like that is on the way. We would love to have had better data in order to look at that properly. We would have liked to look at non-voters as well. However, the nature of the data we had available meant that we could only really focus on people who are engaged in politics. One of the most important aspects of an election study is that one wants to tap those who are not interested in politics and understand what drives those people and where they are going in terms of their behaviour and attitudes. That is the big constraint we experienced during our recent research. My colleagues might add to that if I have left anything out.

In terms of the question of the electoral commission versus the Irish Research Council, we have had several meetings with the latter at this stage. The strongest point to emerge from those meetings is that because the electoral commission's budget is annualised, it can simply not cater for an election study. It cannot predict how many elections will occur, when a general election will occur or where the cost of an election will fall. It sent us to other places for that reason. I agree with Deputy Ó Broin that the electoral commission could well be the best vehicle in which to locate something like this.

For an election study to be run in the way we believe it should be run, it should be as open, transparent and widespread across the research community as possible. We tried to do that in the 2011 and 2016 studies. We had a large committee of political scientists, both new and established, including PhD students, post-doctoral workers and full-time members of staff, where people could come up with ideas for questions. There was an attempt to ensure that this was spread as widely as possible. The data are shared across the research community, and as the Deputy pointed out, they were shared more widely. These data are widely available for people to access. Perhaps my colleagues can add more to that.