Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

On the amendment, the Minister of State already probably has heavy shoulders given all of the additional work we have put on him and the commission, but these are important points. The electorate is actually more sophisticated than people often give them credit for, if we look at the low level of spoils in elections in general. I have always been taken by the fact that when we go through the spoils, there is rarely a significant difference in terms of the geographical location or the demographic location. The one difference, however, is in European elections and local elections. Those of us who do the spoils often see a very clear pattern where people take the two ballots as consecutive and they go right down through the two ballots. I think there are those areas where the electorate understand the system very well and are very sophisticated in how to operate it, but there are those cases where there is clearly anecdotal evidence from those of us who have been around elections for a long time where increasing knowledge of elections is key.

One of the questions I get asked a lot, often by people who have been around elections longer than I have, is that where people do not go all the way down the ballot, it somehow negatively impacts on their preferences. Of course, I always give the advice to only vote for candidates who the person wants to see elected and to stop at the point at which they do not want to see anybody else elected. The fact people even think that if they do not go all the way down, this means somebody else gets the vote when they have not assigned it, shows there are areas of the system where voter education is very important.

We see with referenda that there is real value in the way the referendum commission runs information campaigns. Those campaigns generate additional awareness of the elections and help push up turnout, although not as much as we would like to see in some referenda. Again, while maybe the level of detail in this amendment is more than what is needed for a Bill, I absolutely think the spirit of what Deputy O'Callaghan is looking for, and to have some legislative provision for this, is very important. I am keen to see what the Minister of State has to say. I certainly support the spirit as well as a fair amount of the content of the amendment.