Mr. Noel Whelan:

To respond to Deputy McLoughlin, there are two issues with the electoral register. One is the failure of the county councils to engage adequately with each other, particularly in Dublin. It is 28 years since I went to UCD. In the first year I stayed in digs in Ballinteer and I registered in Dublin South. In second year I moved to Ranelagh and registered in the Dublin city area, but the council did not take me off the register in Dublin South. In the third year I stayed in Blackrock, which is the Dún Laoghaire county council area, but I was not removed in Ranelagh or Ballinteer. My father, being a councillor, made sure I stayed on the register in Wexford as well. In theory, at least, I was recorded in each election as not having voted three times, which is why it affects the turnout as well. That was in the mid-1980s, which was a great deal less volatile in terms of demographic shifts. The PPS number is ultimately the answer, and we can get to that system.

However, there is another issue. There used to be a pattern of active campaigns every October or thereabouts to put new people on the register or to put people on the register at new addresses. In the recent referendum the campaigning groups, and the Union of Students in Ireland was campaigning in it while I was involved in another group, reached out to get the younger voters in particular on the register. They did it in innovative ways, such as registration desks in the colleges and online encouragement for people to do it. Some of that became controversial because a garda must certify the identity for the supplementary register. It would not be controversial if the electoral commission was providing the same facilities, not requiring people to come to it to register but reaching out to find and encourage people to register. If that was done properly on an annual basis, there would be less need for people to be on the supplementary register, so the additional cumbersome process of identification would not be there.

I tilt towards Deputy Fleming's view, as members will see in my paper, that the electoral boundaries should be done by a stand-alone, temporarily appointed boundary commission. In fairness to boundary commissions, and like the committee members I am among the few people who have read their reports over the years, they have begun to develop a consistency at least in terms of trying to identify big geographical areas with which they can work. The answer might be that the electoral commission would staff and support the boundary commission when it is established, in the same way that the Secretary General of the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government is currently on the boundary commission and it is staffed by a principal officer or senior officer in that Department, so at least the corporate memory and material is brought forward from election to election. That might be part of the solution.

I emphasise again, however, that one of the most controversial powers in any electoral system is the power to draw boundaries. It dominated for decades in Northern Ireland. At one time here the folklore was that Kevin Boland, when he was Minister with responsibility for the environment, used to send over to Mount Street for the best tallymen before he would draw the constituency maps for the next election. Then there was the controversy with the Tullymander, which ultimately gave rise to the change. It was the first modernisation of our electoral system to allocate that to an independent commission and I would be careful about shifting it. That is my general point.