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

As my questions follow on from that point, Ms Carolan can hold her thought because we will come back to it in a second. I thank the witnesses for their opening remarks. The submissions will be very helpful to us when we get to Second and Committee Stages. I am very old fashioned. I happen to think that the less money is involved in politics, the better, particularly the less money is involved in political advertising. Deputy Paul Murphy and I have been the cheapest Deputies in the current and the last Dáil, coming in at about one third of our allocated expenditure. I have always thought there should be significantly longer periods for the regulation of expenditure by electoral candidates. The idea that it is only the money we spend in a three or four-week period is crazy when one can front-load all one's expenditure in the months before that, so I certainly appreciate some of what Ms Carolan is saying.

My questions follow on directly from the point Ms Carolan just made. I will pull out three strands. For example, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland strongly recommends that there should be broadly the same types of regulations for all different media platforms. As Ms Carolan rightly referenced, the ICCL talks about the need for a distinction between elections and electoral actors and broader issue-based campaigning etc. While Ms Carolan is obviously talking about the need for online participation, there seems to be a suggestion that her proposals at the end might under certain circumstances have a certain degree of tension with the ICCL. I want to tease that out. Am I misunderstanding that? Is is more that Ms Carolan is calling for greater transparency rather than greater restrictions for the non-electoral element of the regulation? Could she tease that out?

My next question relates to the key bolded bullet point in Ms Carolan's conclusion. If something is not in a Bill, it does not happen. Therefore, for those of us who would like to take up the points Ms Carolan is raising and make the case for them to be included in the Bill, could she talk about what she would like to see in the Bill that would give effect to her key recommendation in the third last paragraph of her submission? How would it enforce standards? What kinds of principles would apply and how can the institution be empowered through the legislation to be able to deal with that evolving set of circumstances?

That would be helpful.