Mr. Art O'Leary:

The Senator made some interesting points. With regard to the first point, about disabled people voting, we have started a national election and democracy study, which is a longitudinal study looking at voters and non-voters. We know nothing about voters in this country. We should be ashamed of ourselves, really. We know even less about people who do not vote. However, over the past three or four electoral events, we have done a deep dive into the reasons that people do not vote. Interestingly, 9% of the people who did not vote in the election last time said it was because of their disability. People with disabilities are a really important target audience for us.

We have not looked at something like a gender quota because it is not entirely in our wheelhouse. We look at voters. Candidacy is a little further down the value chain but it is something we cannot ignore, because if people are engaged in electoral politics, whether as a candidate or through involvement in running a campaign or campaigning in some way, it is much more likely to bring people with a disability out to vote. I am happy to extend our ambition to include encouraging people to run. Whatever we can do to support research in that regard, we will be happy to do.

Deputy O'Toole asked if we have sufficient funds for research, etc., and I am delighted to say that we do. We have a significant research budget but because we are a small organisation, we will probably outsource much of the research to specialists in the area. This is where I am a big fan of the work done by Dr. Price and Professor Flynn and we should be doing that an awful lot more. It is best to leave it to the experts and ask them to tell us what they think, and our Electoral Commission will have a look and be happy to make recommendations to the Government.