Mr. Peter Tyndall:

I will comment on the remarks about funding. At present, SIPO deals with both electoral funding and the ongoing funding of political parties. There is a question to be answered as to whether one would separate funding specifically related to expenditure in elections and ongoing funding of political parties. Given the proposals for the future of the ethics regime, there has been an argument that the ongoing funding fits with the ethics and the lobbying in that they all relate to ongoing political activity as opposed to election related activity, but that would have to be teased out in a detailed discussion because the proposal in the ethics legislation to set up a standards commissioner might well have an impact on the decision on where to locate the function of ongoing political party funding.

The Comptroller and Auditor General has spoken about the impact on his role of creating an electoral commission, the role of ex officio members and how that might transfer. Electoral commissions in some countries fall within the parliamentary ombudsman jurisdiction. Were it decided for the future, and that is another decision that will have to be made as part of the ongoing consideration of legislation to bring an electoral commission within the Ombudsman jurisdiction, that would have an impact on the possibility of an ex officiorole for the Ombudsman.

I would endorse the issue about the need for sanctions with more teeth. The current regime probably is designed in a way that makes it very difficult to enforce it actively. One would hope that any regime could be more actively enforced to deal with the kind of issues that Deputy Catherine Murphy was properly raising.

On a timeline, it seems that a lot of it relates to when a referendum may be held in the next Oireachtas and when the next set of elections might be held. It appears as though it would be helpful, for instance, to put in place some aspects of a referendum process before a referendum might take place under the auspices of a new Dáil. This is probably a consideration. I would have said three to five years as a timeline, with the latter figure on the outside because it would be good to see something in place.

To revert to the matter of appointments, I picked up on the issue of the current Oireachtas arrangements perhaps not being seen to be all-encompassing in respect of the various political parties. However, it appears that fundamentally there should be an objective appointments process to public bodies and that appointments should subsequently be ratified by the Oireachtas in order that they would be perceived as being owned by it but undertaken in an objective and neutral fashion. This would provide greater confidence in the new arrangements. I have probably dealt with the elements that should be included. As I stated, neither the Standards in Public Office Commission nor the Referendum Commission has taken a view on the role of local government. It did not fall within our broad remit and it did not seem to be appropriate to comment. Therefore, the ongoing points being made by representatives of local government probably have more relevance than anything it would be appropriate for us to say.