Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

On behalf of the Referendum Commission, I welcome the public consultation on the establishment of an electoral commission in Ireland and thank the committee for its invitation to contribute to this process. By way of background, a referendum commission is formally established at the discretion of the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, to carry out specific functions in relation to a particular referendum.

As members may be aware, the Chief Justice nominates the chairperson of the commission who is usually a serving judge of the High Court. The other members who are ex officioare the Clerk of the Dáil, the Clerk of the Seanad, the Ombudsman, Mr. Peter Tyndall, and the Comptroller and Auditor General or specified alternates in the event of a vacancy.

The current referendum commission, under the chairmanship of Mr. Justice Kevin Cross, was established for the purposes of the marriage referendum and the age of presidential candidates referendum. The legislation governing the establishment of a referendum commission is the Referendum Act, 1998, as amended by the Referendum Act, 2001. Under the current legislation, the primary roles of the commission are to provide general explanations of the subject matter of a referendum proposal; to promote public awareness of the referendum; and to encourage the electorate to vote. The requirement under the 1998 Act to set out arguments for and against a particular referendum proposal was removed by the 2001 Act.

Funding for the commission is provided from the relevant departmental Vote and any unspent balance must be returned to the Department after each campaign. Each commission exists only for a set period and is disestablished subsequent to presentation of a formal report to the Minister and in any event within six months of polling day. As a result, commissions have often had limited time in which to prepare materials and advertising campaigns and have not had the time or the resources to undertake an ongoing or even a pre-planned programme to promote voter registration and turnout or an in-depth analysis of the factors that influence them.

Low voter turnout for constitutional referendums, especially of young voters, has been a matter of serious concern to previous referendum commissions. Turnout has varied considerably, with a high turnout often only occurring where the referendum coincides with national or local elections. However, some issues in themselves have also attracted a high turnout. For example, the turnout for the recent referendums was in excess of 60%, which was the highest since referendum commissions were established. On the other hand, the turnout for the children's rights referendum in 2012 was only around 33%, one of the lowest ever for a referendum.

The referendum commission is of the view that there is a clear and urgent need for an ongoing campaign, among young people in particular, to encourage voter registration and voting. In that regard, we consider that a single body with a permanent existence and the capacity to run an ongoing and well planned voter awareness campaign would be more effective than a body brought into existence a few weeks prior to a referendum and with a strictly limited remit. The current referendum commission endorses the position adopted by its predecessors that the solution to this problem is the transfer of all of the functions of the referendum commission to an independent electoral commission.

I will address a couple of issues in my capacity as Comptroller and Auditor General, separately from my ex officiomembership of the standards in public office and referendum commissions. They relate to questions Nos. 5 and 7 in the consultation paper. Because the electoral commission would be funded from money provided by the Oireachtas, it would be expected that the Comptroller and Auditor General would be appointed as the commission’s auditor. The consultation paper raises the issue as to whether the Comptroller and Auditor General could, or should, additionally be a member of the commission. If the electoral commission was statutorily or operationally obliged to adopt the annual accounts, it would create a clear conflict if one of its members was also the auditor. I note that in some jurisdictions the chief electoral officer is the Accounting Officer. In such cases, if responsibility for the preparation and presentation of the annual accounts was a personal responsibility of the Accounting Officer, rather than of the electoral commission as a whole, this conflict could be avoided. However, it is difficult to see how the Comptroller and Auditor General could participate as a member of the electoral commission with a broad remit and, at the same time, carry out examinations of the performance of the commission as provided for under section 9 of the Comptroller and Auditor General (Amendment) Act 1993.

I am happy to deal with these matters in more detail, as the committee requires.