Mr. Art O'Leary:

Gabhaim míle buíochas leis an Teachta Ellis as na focail chineálta maidir leis an gCoimisiún Toghcháin. In the last 30 years, there have been eight separate Government decisions to establish an electoral commission but this is the first time that we have got round to doing it. We have been jogging on the spot for 30 years, waiting for this moment, and we are not going to lose the opportunity. I agree with everything Deputy Ellis said. There is much work to be done across this whole spectrum.

The electoral register is a particular case in point. We all understand in this country that the electoral register is not anything like as good as it could or should be. We are good in this country at putting people on the register and not great at taking them off. A brilliant project is going on in the Custom House to make a single database with personal public service numbers and dates of birth to eliminate duplicates and so on. We will run an ambitious voter engagement programme to reach into these groups that are currently not on the register. I was at the Citizens' Assembly on Drugs Use over the summer and I heard one of the workers in an addiction treatment centre talk about hard-to-reach groups. He said there is no such thing as hard-to-reach groups, only hard-to-reach services. We have been looking at this issue, as a State, from the wrong end of the telescope for decades now. These people are getting up in the morning, living their lives and doing their business. We cannot complain that we cannot get at them or that they cannot reach us. We need to hang out in places where they hang out. We will have an education and engagement programme that will be ambitious enough to reach all of these people to ensure they have the opportunity to engage on the electoral register.

I absolutely accept what the Deputy said about voting on a Saturday. If people are not in a position to vote, then we have to make it easier for people to vote. It would be disappointing for people who want to turn up in a polling station and cast their ballot like the rest of their community and vote with their community-----