Dr. Theresa Reidy:

We have very good practice on voter education with the Referendum Commission. It is pretty good at running advertising campaigns and alerting people to the date and the content of referendums. It is a question of using that existing expertise, broadening it out and ensuring the commission has a role to play there. If we had regular advertisements before elections which showed the content of the ballot paper and how to vote down the ballot paper, that would help significantly.

These are all modest changes, but cumulatively they could be very important for our most vulnerable voters.

As for good practice in regard to postal voting, the UK recently undertook an expansion of postal voting, and while there have been problems with it, there is much we can learn from what it has been doing because it has been moving significantly into this space. That is where the electoral commission would begin its investigations. Postal voting is a crucial issue because if the proposal to enfranchise emigrant voters is passed in a referendum, those voters will have to vote by post. There is significant potential, therefore, for this to have to be examined in great detail.

To pick up on Deputy Gould's point about preregistration in schools and the issue of school-leavers, this reinforces why local authorities are needed on the ground. They need to continue with door-to-door canvassing. It is mentioned in the Bill that local authorities might organise events to boost registration and they will have some autonomy in that area. Those are important reasons and they reaffirm why we want some people to be on the ground. The centralised rolling register will facilitate and improve data-sharing but the Bill is cautious in that it makes clear that the commission will have to engage with the Data Protection Commissioner and the Attorney General regarding how these matters will be managed and operated.