Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Previous speakers asked questions that I had intended asking, including on votes at 16 years and election posters. I will focus, therefore, on online political advertising during the election. As Deputy Ó Broin said, this is probably the weakest element of the Bill. Does this have to be a paid advertisement that is explicitly marked or, where third parties get involved, could they be required to explicitly state what they are doing for the duration of the election? I have in mind more nefarious third-party actors that might create and spread disinformation, memes and so on. We have an opportunity to learn some lessons from what has happened in other countries and put in place a robust system of challenging technology companies and the influence they have on elections. In India recently, the main nationalist party did very well in what was called the first WhatsApp election. I am concerned about private messaging groups where actors spread misinformation and engage in fearmongering. We need to consider regulating them. Is there scope for the electoral commission to examine that issue? If not, could we, on Committee Stage, consider not only official paid political advertising but the use of information to influence an election?

I refer to expanding votes for immigrants.

At the moment, we have a situation where non-citizens can only vote in local elections but people have to be citizens to vote in Dáil elections or referendums. This has particularly come to the fore since the Brexit referendum, when a lot of people living in Ireland for a long time realised they could not vote in referendums. Are there any proposals on the table or any thinking around the electoral commission taking a look at referendums and expanding votes beyond citizens to people who live here for a certain amount of time? I know many European citizens do not get citizenship because they consider it to be prohibitively expensive. We have one of the highest citizenship fees in the world. Those are the two issues I would like to ask about.