Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses. I welcome all-female participation in elections. There is a lack of women representatives. I, too, came up through the county council system. I served six years on my local council. The first couple of years were within a party and I was elected as an independent candidate on the second occasion.

I can see where a lot of the issues lie. When I sat on the Limerick City and County Council, two young ladies left because they found it too hard to serve as councillors and try to keep their outside jobs. Young men also left the county council, whether they had families or other commitments, because they found it very hard to keep down a job with the way the council was structured. This is one of the things that needs to change. We have a lot of fantastic young political minds out there and we need to make sure that they can participate. As with any generation, one cannot put an old head on young shoulders, but we are all here to learn and every day is a learning day, no matter what age a person is. This is what helps us to move from one day to another.

I fully welcome the point of view of representatives of Travellers. I was one of the people who grew up old school, where we had the generations of people coming to our house, such as the tinsmiths and so on. They all had their own cultures. I am involved in cultures, through vintage and otherwise, and I would like to see all people being represented by members of their own cultures. Coláiste na Trócaire is a secondary school in Rathkeale. When one mentions Rathkeale, people might imagine that it has about 54% or 55% of a Traveller community within Rathkeale, where it goes to secondary school. With the cultures that exist, however, the females do not go to mainstream school because their cultures do not want them mixing with the different cultures. They are accommodated through a different schooling system. This creates a problem. The males usually come to second level school for the first two to three years to learn trades, and then they leave school. Less than 1% of Travellers in the State actually finish second level. This is also an issue we need to address from their point of view. I am delighted that this school helps and works with the different cultures and societies. Coláiste na Trócaire should be commended for its work in this regard.

On 16-year-olds having their voice, I am the father of four boys. Many 16-year-olds would have liked to voice their opinions on the driver theory test delays recently, and especially those from the farming community. Many young men and women in the State would have liked to voice their opinions on this at the time. I welcome that.

On the electorate and voting, no one has mentioned it, but people are saying how hard it is to get onto the register. I believe that it must be linked to a person's PPS number. If a person is at school and working part time, the first thing he or she gets is a PPS number. Neither has anyone mentioned how distraught people get whenever a voting card arrives into the house for a parent, a grandparent, a brother or a sister who is deceased. I am surprised that nobody mentioned this matter. The link with the PPS number would get rid of all that because it would be linked to a death certificate when a person passes away. Using PPS numbers is the only way we can link such things, and then we would not cause upset to those whose relatives have passed away.

This could also apply when people move around. I saw it with the general election when people would call me to say that they had received three polling cards, one to their current address and the other two to previous addresses.

They might be in the same parish but in different townlands. If a person goes to vote and has his or her PPS number, there cannot be two, three or four votes. It would clear up the system that we have at the moment and knock out anything to do with fraud. Not only would we make sure that only one person votes, we would also respect the people who have passed away by making sure voting cards are not being issued for them to the upset of their families. I would like to hear the witnesses' views on that.