Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank all our guests for being here. I welcome them in their capacity as members of a newly formed organisation. We need the commission now more than ever. We know that democracy is fragile. We are living in a changing world of 24-7 news, fake news, artificial intelligence, targeted adverts, misinformation and social media.

All of those factors can be weaponised to attack democracy. The commission is operating in a different space than it would have been were it established ten or 20 years ago, so I thank it for the work it does.

I have a comment on online advertising. I think we should be looking at regulating that, not just during election periods but right throughout election cycles. My first question is about constituency review, and I thank the commission for its work on this, although this is probably not really a question for the witnesses. Is there a timeframe within which the legislation to bring that into effect needs to be passed on publication of the reports? My second question concerns the commission's responsibility for oversight of the electoral register, and its accuracy and completeness. I first compliment the current campaign being run at voter.ie. It is effective and good. It is great that it is happening outside of that election period too because it is effective in that way. I know in my local authority there are discrepancies between this year's and last year's register of electors as provided to me as an elected representative. How do we, as public representatives, flag that? Do we flag that with our council or do we flag it with the commission? How do we do it in a GDPR-safe way? My third question is about a pet peeve of mine, which is proportional representation. I feel a lot of our electorate does not how our election system works. I know that education and public engagement comes under the Commission's remit. What plans are in place to show people how 1,2,3 works?