Mr. Art O'Leary:

It would be huge for us. The difficulty with the general election was the shortness of the campaign. It was three weeks. An election was called on a Friday. The deadline for closing of postal votes is two days after a dissolution, which was the Sunday. People had a weekend. Our experience is somewhat similar to that of the Passport Office. Irish people tend to check their passports are in order the day before they go on holidays. It is the same with voting. We will have a focused campaign across what will be longer deadlines in the presidential election. For the last couple of presidential elections, the polling day order was made at the end of August for an election that took place at the end of October. There is lots of room in there to get people registered to vote. If 22% of the population is indeed disabled, we should have more than 3,564 disabled people registered to vote. We need to do much better. There is an opportunity for us to campaign properly. The Senator is right that it is not just disability. Our evidence suggests that between 30% and 40% of people did not vote in the elections last year because they felt that politics had nothing to do with them. They did not know who to vote for, and they did not think their single vote would make a difference. This is a real opportunity for us to go to change their minds.