Mr. Robbie Sinnott:

I thank Deputy Tully for the question. It was great that Senator Seery Kearney mentioned the model in Estonia because that is accessible and, with all due respect to the symbolism of turning up to a polling station, if that means crossing several cycle lanes without safe planning etc., it is not on the cards. Being able to vote in an accessible and countable way is the main thing. Estonia is doing it quite well. I understand New South Wales has, for the past few years - since 2012, I think - been using a similar system of online voting. It is not just for visually impaired people but for everybody, so that whoever is voting is not necessarily visually impaired. There are other systems. For instance, in Spain they do phone voting, so a visually impaired person can phone in their vote but somebody calls them back to check. There are checks around it so they know their vote has been properly cast.

In Ireland we have a voting template system which marks the vote. It is very 19th century, even though we only got the first iteration of it in 2018. It is difficult to use. I voted using my coat to cover the stencil in the ballot paper. I was on a stage with many people coming up around me to see what I was up to, hence the coat over the thing. I did not need to see what I was doing but other people clearly did.

The whole thing is structural. There is no point in concentrating on an individual case because everything is structural. The word míchumasach means disempowered. The norm in Irish is daoine a bhfuil míchumas orthu, meaning people who have powerlessness on them, which is disability. That is much more the social model than míchumasach, which is permanently disempowered and not a good idea.