Dr. Theresa Reidy:

On the election and referendum research, we have been in before talking about how there should be research conducted at every election and referendum. At a bare minimum it should be done at every general election, because throughout Europe and many of the advanced industrial democracies, it is quite standard that research is conducted on why people vote, why people did not, their experiences of the campaign, what information they acquired and when they decided to vote. This information is in essential in informing policy development on the conduct and management of elections.

It is also vital for sharing with all political parties and candidates so that they can understand it. We are aware that a lot of political parties are doing this research by themselves at the moment. One of the additional advantages of involving the electoral commission is that this is non-partisan research done by an independent commission and done up to international academic standards, which must meet the standards of the international studies to which all of this research contributes. It is also shared with everybody, including all the political parties and civil society organisations. It can inform the strategies of the individual parties and candidates and it can inform policy. There are a lot of advantages to conducting impartial, independent research and ensuring that it can be shared widely.

If I may, I will make an academic point. With referendums, for example, and because of Ireland leading the way in deliberative democracy, a lot of things have happened in Ireland that have been of interest to the global research and policy communities. We have not necessarily had the data after these events to be able to share those experiences. This has been a real limitation with regard to the marriage referendum and the abortion referendum. We did some small research but it was of a very limited nature because we do not have an automatic research function, which is in most other advanced industrial democracies. It is very important to make the point that it would be to the advantage and benefit of everybody in the political system and it would reduce costs and barriers for political parties.