Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Amendment No. 48 follows on from much of the intention of Deputy O'Callaghan's amendment No. 37 with the addition of a mandatory voting provision. I do not think that needs to be enshrined in legislation given we are burdening the commission with enough work. Given the way we are going, I fear no one will want to sit on the commission because there will be so much work to be done. Many valid points have been made and Deputy O’Callaghan has put a great deal of work into this. He has pointed to the international research that exists on the issue. While it might be an advantage to be at the top of the voting list, it is probably equally advantageous to be at the bottom given that if there is a list of 30-odd candidates, a voter's eye will scan that list very quickly.

I take on board Deputy Nash's point about standards for opinion polls and broadcast election debates. Nevertheless, we have to acknowledge that even if we might not always agree with the results, the standard of polling in this country is very high. Even though it is self-regulated, it is done very well. We cannot account for how the general public will interpret those results afterwards and that is not an issue for the polling companies. They do a very good job and self-regulate but it is something we need to keep an eye on.

Similarly, the standard of election debates in the context of fairness and equality for all has been especially high, although that does not mean we should not shine a light on the issue and see how it could be done better. We can never account for a bad performance and numerous such examples over the years have influenced elections. No number of prescriptive rules and guidelines can guard against that and any attempt to do so would just involve more work for the commission.