Mr. Art O'Leary:

I thank the Senator. There is a lot of ground to cover there. The Senator's first question was about different types of elections and different types of entitlements. There are not only local and European Parliament elections in June. We will also have a referendum on the patent court as well. For the people of Limerick, they will also be electing a directly-elected mayor. There are quite sophisticated electoral registers in each polling station which will ensure that people will get the correct ballot papers when they are entitled to vote. Anyone ordinarily resident in the country is entitled to vote in the local elections but European citizens only are entitled to vote in the European elections. This has happened on a number of occasions in the past. We are confident that the systems there are okay but it is something we will keep an eye on.

On the misinformation-disinformation issue, as I mentioned in my opening statement, there are extensive powers in the Electoral Reform Act 2022 in relation to misinformation and disinformation. These have not yet been commenced by the Minister and the Electoral Commission currently has no regulatory, investigative or sanctioning powers in the area of misinformation- and disinformation. What we have is the obligation to inform citizens about the elections.

I will split this in two. One is electoral process information. The example that I used was people in Germany being encouraged to write their names on the ballot paper. Many people wrote their names on a ballot paper because they thought they would be entered into a raffle and that they would win a prize. On electoral process information, if somebody came out and said that the referendums in March are on 9 March, we would simply correct that and say, "No, they are on 8 March". Electoral process information is slightly different because it tends to be a bit more black and white.

We are very conscious of the right to freedom of expression in this country and this is a constitutional right, but we are also conscious that we have an obligation that our citizens and the electorate have the right to be informed properly as well. This is a right that has to be balanced. I suspect the conversations going on between Government and the EU on the nature of the powers in Parts 4 and 5 are the reason for the delay in commencing this and that it is an attempt to strike that balance in line with the Digital Services Act as well, but I could not disagree with the Senator in relation to the importance of this issue.

As I mentioned in the opening statement, the way that misinformation-disinformation is leaked into the environment now is becoming increasingly sophisticated and it is increasingly complex. We have to be ready to be able to deal with that. We are building an organisation right now from scratch, which is versatile, flexible, responsive and aware of developments in the area. These are not features that many State bodies are often accused of but the challenge for us is to be able to do that.