Dr. Theresa Reidy:

As regards jobs, a lot of what we are talking about involves consolidating existing positions under the one umbrella. There are things we can learn from other countries. One of the reasons we recommended following something like the UK model, where they still use staff from local authorities, is because the experience of both Australia and Canada has been that it is difficult to hire staff. These staff work for two or three days at election time. They work quite long hours and the pay tends to be pretty poor. Canada saw a 25% drop in the number of applications between two elections and the cautionary note in the research on electoral management bodies suggests that if there is an existing structure that works well around the provision of these ad hocservices that should be maintained as it can be difficult to establish new ones. It is not that people would lose their jobs - the people who currently do the work would do it under a more structured framework with clear standards and better provision for training.