Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Joyce, Mr. Doorley and Ms Lane for coming before the committee and giving of their time today, for their submissions and for the really important work they do generally. I would make a few points regarding the prelegislative scrutiny work we are doing on the Bill. Our democracy depends on free and fair elections and for those to be healthy, effective and strong, they need to be representative. I agree with everything Mr. Joyce said about how far removed Travellers are from the political process and establishment and voter registration and participation, and we have to charge the electoral commission to try to address that. I come from Dublin Central and the north inner city of Dublin Central is a constituency that has in parts 60% to 65% of the population identifying as non-Irish.

In the most recent census, more than 500,000 people identified as non-Irish. That is more than 12% of our population. There is a massive disconnect there too. We live in a diverse society and we need our politics to be diverse also.

With regard to the electoral commission, Mr. Joyce referred to having a minorities advisory committee or a committee with a minorities function. Will he elaborate on how that would work, and in particular how it would address the non-Irish cohort?

In the context of gender equality and gender quotas in politics, progress has been made in certain respects. I do not necessarily agree that it is easier for Independent female Members who are outside the party system to progress politically than would be the case if they were in parties. That debate is for another day, however. The quotas are applied to parties. Would there be merit in changing it to a situation whereby quotas were assigned to the assemblies, for example, seats would be reserved at local authority level, in the Dáil or in the Seanad along the lines of 40% for females, 40% for males and 20% could be a mix or some variation of those percentages? We could remove the quota element from the organisations or the Independents and apply it to the assemblies. This would drive political behaviour and result in assemblies that are representative, as opposed to us trying to drive activity within subsets of the political anomaly, be they political organisations or others.

I completely concur with all of the witnesses in terms of the electoral register. We need to strengthen the functions that are being proposed. We need a centralised register. We need to simplify the registration process but we absolutely need to beef up the authenticity of it also, and the verification process. This is a hard balance to get right when one is trying to accommodate people who may be transient, to facilitate their easy access and registration, and at the same time ensure that we mitigate against the impact of voter fraud. If the witnesses have any thoughts on how we or the electoral commission can do that, they would be very welcome.