Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I do not know if the Minister of State is aware, but as part of our pre-legislative scrutiny, we invited all the political parties to appear. Some of them did come and meet with us, whereas others did not even acknowledge the invitation, which was hugely disappointing. A basic political activity, particularly for a political organisation receiving funding from the public purse, would be to at a minimum acknowledge an invitation from an Oireachtas joint committee. Does Minister of State see a role for the electoral commission in monitoring or reviewing the behaviour of political actors into the future? The other point to which I draw his attention is that one of the political parties has created a centralised database, which contains the electoral registers from every constituency. It has also managed to combine with that the marked register. It has done all of that for less than €500 and in less than a year. Would the Department or Minister of State consider consulting with that political organisation on how it has done that? It seems to have been quite an achievement and something that the State has not yet managed to do. Would the Minister of State consider consulting the organisation on that?

The electoral commission will report to the Minister once a year. I think this refers to head 88 or 81, but I am not quite sure and I can check. I will come to Ms Woods on this, if needs be. I would have thought that there would be a public report on the electoral register every year and that that would just be on a website, or something.