Mr. Brian Sheehan:

We accept that larger parties have greater resources and so on in terms of accessing voters and getting the message across to voters. To be clear, any funding spent on advertising that we are able to do throughout elections is money raised directly from our members or the public. We do not spend any State funding on advertising through an election. That limits us as a smaller party. In the previous election, we were very successful in reaching voters and getting our message across. The challenge, as we have seen internationally, is the use of microdata and microtargeting to reach people with messages that, in some cases we have seen, inflame and are anti-democratic and anti-voter turnover. Those are the areas where money is being spent that are most damaging to the body politic and to democracy in general. The resources mean some parties with deeper pockets can reach people in a way that does not create a level playing pitch. It is crucial there is transparency around who is being targeted by whom and the amounts of money being spent. That should be done in real time rather than post an election.