Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Casey asked a question about political scientists. I will have to check that out. I will have a chat with the Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Phelan, about that. I do not see why we could not have a dedicated fund for that kind of research.

One always runs the risk of being accused that one is carrying out the research for the benefit of the Government. I will not go over old ground in that regard. We had commissioned some research and decided not to go ahead with it, but maybe there is a way to do it. Given the very high number of spoiled ballots in elections gone by, a bit of research into that would be beneficial. Also, there could be some research in respect of turnout. A 50% turnout is not bad for local and European elections, but I would be interested to know why 50% did not vote. It would be very useful to have that information. I will speak to the Minister of State about whether that is something we can do. It does not require the establishment of an electoral commission, although that would be the ideal vehicle for it.

Like the Deputy, the research I found most interesting on the day was the exit poll, which turned out to be wrong beyond the margin of error on many counts. For the first day, RTÉ and a lot of the media reported on the exit poll, not the election. I saw Ms Saoirse McHugh, a really impressive young woman from Achill who had been elected by RED C that morning, interviewed on RTÉ all morning. She was not a runner-up. One thing they do in the Netherlands, which might be something for us to consider, is to require media outlets when they report opinion polls not to report the medium, but to report the range. Instead of saying that a party is at 32%, they should have to say that the party is actually at between 29% and 31%. That would be more accurate for a start and would also be beneficial politically. It is something that we need to give some thought to, particularly as there is a margin of error in all these things that causes people, both media and politicians, to jump to conclusions that are not actually based on the science.

Regarding the electoral commission, we need to do it. It is long overdue. It is still a project that is in gestation and, again, is under the remit of the Minister of State, Deputy Phelan, in the Customs House. We have this bizarre situation where we are setting up referendum commissions all of the time. Referendums have become a very frequent feature in Ireland and we are forever setting them up, closing them down, finding a judge and finding offices. It is kind of crazy. If we had a permanent electoral commission, so many of these things would be done much better, including the register.

I had a good discussion with Ms Nicola Sturgeon when she was in town in recent days. The Scottish use STV for some of their elections as we do. They do not use electronic voting, but they do use electronic counting. They have machines that one just feeds the ballot papers into. They are glass and one can see what is going on. They are able to count their votes in a matter of hours whereas we could still be counting votes down in Cork City Hall in a few days' time. While I would never go for electronic voting again, maybe we should think about electronic counting. Perhaps we could borrow the machines from Scotland every now and then.

On the question of education, I am not sure if it is a rosy picture but I think it is a good picture. If the Deputy looks at our international statistics, our Irish students perform pretty well in reading, maths and so many different areas. Our teachers and our educators do a fabulous job. On school secretaries and caretakers, that is one of those long-standing issues that I would love to see resolved, but anything we do would have to be prospective. If they were taken on as public sector employees into the future, it would have to be prospective. I do not think we could do anything retrospectively for lots of reasons.

I will have to come back to the Deputy on the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs, EPSEN, Act. It is approximately 15 years since that legislation was passed and I would imagine large sections of it now are out of date and probably need to be updated in order for the legislation to be implemented.

Deputy Deering asked about the future of agriculture. Crucial to that is the next CAP in the next five-year multi-annual financial framework, MFF. It is something that I keep a close eye on because Ireland is a net contributor to the EU budget but most of what we get back is through CAP. We want that to continue. I am lobbying very hard and building alliances with France, Spain and countries in eastern Europe to try to defend the budget for CAP and ensure that it will be if not more than then ideally the same as it has been in the past. That is going to be a real priority for us as we head into the talks on the MFF, which is Europe's next five-year budget. The best way to achieve that is to make it part of environmental policy, to green the cap and to make it a common agricultural and environmental policy. I am not a farmer, as the Deputy knows, but I have an interest in farming. I was reading all about the detail of the GLAS scheme the other day. Many people do not know this, but there are 60,000 farmers in Ireland who are beneficiaries of the GLAS scheme. Part of what they do under that is plant trees - oak and ash, native trees. They provide wild bird cover, for example. They are already doing many things that make a lot of sense. Maybe it should be mainstreamed as part of CAP that all farmers, or a greater number of them, should be part of GLAS. If we want to get more money for farmers and for CAP, I think it is in that space that we can get it. The other area is, perhaps, transition. If there are farmers who want to move from some forms of farming to other forms that might be more environmentally sustainable, they would have to be incentivised to do that and it would have to be voluntary. If we are looking to boost the budget so that there is more money for farmers and more money for the rural economy, the best way and the right way to do that, I think, is to make it an environmental policy as well as a food policy.