Professor Michael Marsh:

That is fine.

I have been invited to address a bewildering number of questions, but they are clearly things that need to be thought through by anyone setting up an electoral commission. Some of the matters are outside my areas of competence, including costs. There are various works of perhaps fiction about how much electoral commissions cost in different countries. It depends on what goes in and how it is costed but I do not want to get into that. We will let an accountant deal with it. Following Dr. Theresa Reidy's comments on the extremely thorough report of 2008, there are other matters on which I can add nothing of worth beyond the reports already available. We thought that report might have led to something but unfortunately, or fortunately for some people, there was an election instead. I would like to address with the joint committee the functions an electoral commission might fulfil. I can imagine that someone might ask why we need an electoral commission as everything is grand out there. Electoral integrity is quite high in Ireland and there are not a lot of complaints from the majority about the process. The outcome is another matter. I note the briefing document prepared by the Oireachtas Library and Research Service which references a brief submission I made to the Constitutional Convention on the topic of why we need an electoral commission. I will expand briefly on that submission in what I say today.

Most of the countries with which we might compare ourselves have electoral commissions. In particular, I mention Australia, New Zealand, Canada and even the UK, which does not tend to be ahead of the game on these things. The widespread use of the option reflects a norm that sees more legislation covering elections and the removal of electoral matters from direct political control. We have seen this in Ireland in the last few decades with the creation of ad hocinstitutions to determine boundaries which was a function the Minister used to have. We also have SIPO to look after finance and have had successive referendum commissions. As such, we have moved in that direction, albeit by setting up a number of ad hocbodies. Very often, they have been set up with many of the same people.

Table 1 of my submission compares functions across four countries, namely, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. It sets out the various functions electoral commissions in those countries fulfil. Managing the electoral registers is done by all commissions except in the UK where it is done locally. All commissions but that in the UK are responsible for conducting public elections and referendums. All the electoral commissions have responsibility for administering the rules, including funding registration and things like that. All the electoral commissions have some role in determining boundaries even if it is incidental, usually by an overlap of personnel and by providing the servicing function. All of the commissions have a function in terms of educating the public. They all educate, advise and inform government and parliament.

We might think about the Irish case and those same functions. In Ireland, managing the electoral registers is done by local government. Referendum commissions do a little bit of conducting public elections and referendums as do the Department and local government. Administering the rules is done by SIPO and electoral boundaries are determined by ad hocelectoral commissions. I am not sure who has the function of educating the public while the Government and Parliament are probably educated by the Department. Only in the UK are the first two functions not the preserve of electoral commissions. The rest are fulfilled by electoral commissions everywhere.

If one looks more closely at these research and educational functions to get a better idea of what they are, in New Zealand the role of the electoral commission includes advising the Government on changes to electoral rules, reviewing electoral law and procedures, and advising those involved in the conduct of elections and referendums. The functions of the Canadian electoral commission include reporting to the Parliament on the administration of elections and referendums, carrying out studies on alternative voting methods and, with the approval of parliamentarians, testing alternative voting processes for future use during electoral events.

Why should we give these functions to an agency dedicated to this relatively narrow range of functions as compared with leaving it with ad hocbodies and the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government? First, they run less risk of being ignored or given a relatively low priority, and many of these functions have been given a very low priority in the past. Second, and this is most important for the research and new ideas function, apart from the fact that more research and new ideas might become available, these ideas come from a source that would be seen as non-partisan. It cannot be discounted immediately because it has the Minister's fingerprints all over it.

The right of citizens to vote is a central element in democracy. The electoral register, a list of who is allowed to vote and who is not, is clearly very important in that. It is widely recognised that the electoral register we have from our decentralised procedure is far from accurate. It includes many who have no right to vote and does not include many who do have that right. That has been talked about for quite a long time, and it is probably no better. Different local authorities have gone about maintaining it in different ways, with very different degrees of zeal and enthusiasm. They have to spend their money on it, and I am sure they can find, as they see it, better areas on which to spend their money.

As regards new ideas on electoral matters, in the past these have largely come from governments. Suggestions for change in the electoral system to a more majoritarian one was a brilliant idea in the 1960s. It was seen as partisan and rejected by the people in referendums. There have been relatively few other innovations. We saw the addition of party labels on the ballot, which most people would probably see as a good development, and later photographs added to ballot papers. In the recent past we saw a somewhat ill-fated experiment with voting machines. These ideas came from the then Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government.

When it comes to referendums, the practice now is to establish a referendum commission each time. The precise functions of this body have changed a little over time, but it has always been there to maximise citizen awareness and help them engage in the process properly. Anybody reading through the reports of each referendum commission, something it has been my professional duty to do, and all the members might not have read them assiduously, would think it was the same report because they always say the same thing, except the one set up on the second Lisbon treaty referendum that was so important we set up the commission a very long time in advance. The referendum commission always asks the reason it was not set up earlier because it could have done a much better job if it had been set up earlier.

Even allowing for the fact that Governments procrastinate in setting the vote, permanence would greatly facilitate the work of the commission.