Mr. Art O'Leary:

The Senator's opening line was a perfect description of our communications strategy about how to deal with disinformation and misinformation. It involves urging people to think critically and question sources, etc. We are dipping our toe in the water for the first time with this electoral event. The campaign I spoke about, which started last week, about treating every day like April Fool's Day is a quirky attempt to reach an audience that tends to be unengaged and disengaged from the electoral process. Sometimes there is a tendency for people like me who are inside the bubble to think that everyone is going home at night talking about the referendums on 8 March because that is what I am doing when that is not the case. The Irish Times poll last week, which was four weeks out from the referendum, said that 8% of people felt that they knew enough about the referendums in order to be able to cast their vote. We will get to the electoral register in a while but at some point, when we are satisfied that the electoral register is accurate and complete and we can properly measure turnout, I hope we are held to account for increasing turnout in general elections because we need to reach these unengaged groups.

I do not know if any of the members saw or heard our television and radio ads for checktheregister.ie. They are quirky, light-hearted and humorous with the very serious message that if you do not register to vote and vote, then somebody else speaks for you. Some people do not like these ads because they are very different from the fógra we used to see in The Irish Times encouraging people to check the electoral register. I always say to anyone who has a difficulty with these ads that if you do not like them, they are not aimed at you. They are for other people. We have a vast swathe of people in this country who are unengaged. We have been looking at this issue from the wrong end of the telescope for many years. We have sat in rooms thinking about all these people who are unengaged, disengaged and removed from the process. They get up every morning, live their lives and go about their business. Our job is to be in their communities, be that virtual or real. It includes Traveller communities, immigrant communities, young people and women - all of the people who tend not to engage in the electoral process. Our job is to be in their communities and to convince them to come out and get involved because their vote is their voice.

Who knows whether we have enough resources? We certainly have enough to do the electoral events on the basis of our plans right now but based on our experience, we may come back to the Oireachtas and the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform and say that in order to be able to do this job properly, we need a much greater focus in the digital space or whatever else it may be. We will probably be unveiling an extensive engagement and education programme that will look at all these disengaged communities in quarter 3 of this year. When people hear the word "education", they tend to think about people in school - primary and secondary school and universities - but our ambition should be eye-watering in extending beyond that.