Mr. Peter Tyndall:

I will respond to Deputy Stanley's point about the political nature of the process to be overseen by the commission. I take the view of having an independent appointment process so that if members are not ex officio, they would be appointed by some process that would be accountable to the Oireachtas rather than to an individual government of the day. It is inevitable that given the contested nature of some of the decisions that will be taken on issues like boundaries and so on, it clearly is better to find a way of ensuring people are appointed without any suggestion that their independence is tainted. I am sure anyone who took on the role would behave independently, but it is best to appoint such persons in a way that simply removes the possibility of the suggestion that they are other than independent.

On the question of the transfer of functions, I agree with the suggestions. The particular issue of concern to me is that the staff currently providing support to the electoral aspects of SIPO and also to the Referendum Commission are engaged also in the business of ethics. Separate ethics legislation is going through and it will be very important that in managing transition, the two processes are run in parallel to avoid them tripping over each other, so to speak, in practice. I re-emphasise the point made by Mr. McCarthy in his presentation on behalf of the referendum commission. On the business of promoting voter registration and promoting voter participation, I refer to a hugely successful exercise in the most recent referendum which was partly driven by the context of the referendum and partly driven - I hope - by the work of the commission. Having that work undertaken on an ongoing basis seems to be important. I agree that as well as the regulatory functions being an early part of the focus of any new body, I also see promotion of registration and promotion of participation being an early part, with some of the larger functions transferring as the new body became more mature.

That said, I would not want to see the process being over-extended because once the process of transition starts, the staff currently engaged in those tasks will be looking to their futures and I am sure that something that extended over many years would have a destabilising and perhaps demoralising effect. Therefore, it needs to be done in a phased way and over a set period, but not an over-extended one.