Dr. Theresa Reidy:

In terms of how the questions are decided, there are three main components to the study. We often think about the values that people have, including their fundamental views about the nature of democracy and the political system. There are many questions asked in that area. We also ask about attitudes with more surface level questions, including policy issues of the day, and also international questions relating to global trends. We also ask questions focused on the behaviour of people, including items like how one engages with politics, how interested one is and how one follows it. The analysis afterwards combines these different components to come up with deeper ways of understanding patterns of behaviour and the trends over time in the political system. In terms of how that is communicated, in the year after the election we have a little roadshow. I have been to Sinn Féin, Green Party and Social Democrats events, and events for Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. We engage fairly widely with the research communities as well as making the data publicly available to anybody who wants to use them. At the moment, we are also engaged in a separate process which is trying to put all of the partial studies we have conducted in the past in one place so that they will be more accessible to parties and interested civil and voluntary groups which want to use them. That is one of the things we are doing to increase access at the moment.

Deputy Ó Broin asked about the best option. The funding is fairly modest. We are talking about a couple of hundred thousand euro. The amount would go up or down depending on whether there was an election in a given year, or a referendum, or whether two or three referendums were being carried out together. That is really what would determine the amount of funding required.

As long as it is designed in a non-partisan way with serious academic credentials, we are agnostic about the mechanism for funding. The data have to be available and there has to be integrity to the design of the study.