Mr. Christy Hyland:

I am from the municipal district of west Mayo and thank the joint committee for its invitation. As most of the areas have been covered by my colleagues, I will be brief as I am conscious of the time.

I want it to be recognised that the input of local authorities into electoral arrangements and registers must never be diluted because they have been a valuable source of local knowledge and their role should never be interfered with. At times we make a mess of the register. We have a population of only 4.5 million people, yet time and again, as each election takes place, we can never get it right with the register. One system we put forward for consideration is that the moment a citizen reaches the age of 18 years, the Department of Social Protection will notify him or her to register to vote. It is very simple and not rocket science. That is the opinion of the Association of Irish Local Government.

Another issue about which we feel very strongly is that on election day, when each of us wants to exercise our constitutional right and cast our vote, the first people we meet are the polling clerks or the presiding officer.

Some 99% of them are in full-time employment as public servants, working perhaps for the Department of Education and Skills, the Department of Justice and Equality or the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. We feel strongly that qualified young people such as third level students in full-time education who perhaps are studying politics are the ones who should be employed on the day of the count. It is worth between €400 and €500, which to a third level student could be very important. Time and again we hear about who was employed in polling stations, but we still have not got it right and the association believes it is time to call a halt to serving public servants taking annual leave on the day of an election to work in a polling station. It is a crying shame and has to stop. There are 949 of us throughout the country and we get this every day.

A polling card is not an identification card, which can be one's driving licence or passport. People do not even have to bring their polling card to cast a vote.