Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is me. I thank the Minister of State and the departmental staff and echo the comments of colleagues on the phenomenal volume of work that has gone into producing the heads. It is very substantial legislation and it is great to see it finally coming forward. Like others, our party is very supportive of the key provisions of the Bill. I would say this is one of the least contentious pieces of legislation we will deal with in the coming period.

I have a series of questions I will run through and if we do not have enough allocated time for replies, the witnesses might come back at a later stage in the meeting or in writing. One of the functions that the commission does not have is one requested by the previous Oireachtas housing committee, separate to the policy function, of having an electoral and referendum research budget and function. This is something Governments previously funded through groups of academics from a number of universities and it seems logical that this is something that could be located in the commission and it could work with academic institutions to conduct not only significant studies, such as exit polls and other work into referendums and elections, but also independent studies into non-voting and the reasons people do not vote. If there is not a dedicated budget and function, this may not happen. Will the witnesses respond to that omission?

The regulation of online advertising seems to be the weakest section of the Bill. I have no objection to the proposed provisions but we have very strict spending limits for elections, which is one of the very progressive parts of our system compared with others. There is consideration of similar spending limits for similar periods with online advertisements and the application of other kinds of restrictions. I cannot buy a variety of terrestrial or broadcasting advertisements during election campaigns, for example, so why is such a low bar approach being taken with online advertisements, given their significance?

With the register, personal public service, PPS, numbers are crucial but there may be GDPR or privacy concerns. Will the witnesses speak to those? Is it the intention to match a PPS number with a unique voter identification number on the register? I presume if we have rolling registration, it will remove the need for Garda forms to be signed. Will the witnesses confirm that?

It is disappointing to see there is not an expanded provision for postal and proxy voting, as is the norm in many European jurisdictions. Why is this the case? There may be people travelling, on holidays or students who may not be able to attend a vote. This is something that should certainly be explored. A provision for access to the electronic version of the register for political parties does not seem to be in the Bill. We currently get direct access to it. If it is not in the Bill, it will be of particular disadvantage to smaller parties or those which only have electoral representation in certain areas.

I ask for more information about rolling registration, the marked register that will still be available, because obviously that is very valuable to us in the political process. I ask for more information on the oversight role of the commission with respect to the register.