Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 3, lines 26 and 27, to delete “Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage” and substitute “AnCoimisiún Toghcháin”.

I wrote to the Minister earlier this week to explain the rationale behind putting these amendments and I welcome the opportunity to do so. We entirely accept the report of the Electoral Commission. Our amendments are not aimed at the Schedule to the Bill, which gives effect to the recommendations of the commission, and, therefore, I just want to make that clear from the outset. We are not seeking to question the outcome of the deliberations of the commission.

Our amendments relate to process points. The first two amendments relate to section 3. Both are somewhat technical in nature but they are nonetheless quite important. I will go through them, but I am conscious that I have written to the Minister to outline the reasons for putting these down. We are doing this very much in a constructive spirit to seek to ensure that the Bill is sufficiently up to date and accurate in the language it uses.

On the amendment, section 3(2) provides that if any doubt arises as to the constituency in which an electoral division, townland or part of a division or townland is included, the doubt shall be determined by the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage. I acknowledge this provision is a duplicate of others found in previous Acts that redrew constituency boundaries but, as I said in the letter, the previous Acts predated the establishment of a permanent and independent electoral commission, the establishment of which we completely agreed with and welcomed. Even when we had statutory boundary commissions previously, they were wound up as soon as they delivered their report. It made sense to have the Minister as the permanent arbiter of determining a doubt, but of course, that is no longer the case. Happily, the Electoral Commission is now established as a permanent body, and we believe it is the body best position to interpret its own report.

The amendment simply seeks to delete reference to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage and to substitute An Coimisiún Toghcháin, the Electoral Commission, instead. As I have said, it is technical and seeks to update the legislation in a way we believe is appropriate.