Mr. Art O'Leary:

I will give a quick answer. The rolling register is proving successful. The 16- and 17-year olds are starting to enrol now as well. It is a very good thing that they are able to do it all the time rather than having to work with ad hoc deadlines.

The increased use of postal voting is something that the Government has asked us to do some research on as well. There are some fears around increasing the postal voting and while we have to be conscious of that, it would be a help for people who are on holidays or away. I discovered this week that if you are in Dublin studying, etc., you can apply for a postal vote. Students can apply for a postal vote. There are a lot of facilities out there already that people do not know about, and again, that is part of our job to go and do that.

I agree with what was said about checktheregister.ie. It is a brilliant facility to have. It is one of those great things, but sometimes people forget. For example, to take a name out of the blue, if your name was Joe Duffy and you searched for yourself on checktheregister.ie and you could not find yourself, then this would not be a great thing, but it may be that it was your mother or father who registered you as an 18-year old when the local authority fieldworker came around and registered you as "Joseph". There are things that we should do in that regard.

We can probably help people by explaining a little more about how to conduct a proper search. It is my fervent hope that everyone who goes to the polling station on 8 March to vote will discover they are on the register even if they could not find themselves on checktheregister.ie. If not, if there are issues, we will also deal with them because we will have a number of electoral events this year. I agree entirely with the Deputy that the proof of the pudding with the tech companies will be in how they behave in the white hot heat of an election campaign. We have long memories and we are quick learners and we will be holding people to account for not living up to the high expectations we have of them.