Mr. Art O'Leary:

I will do my best. On the issue of postal voting, going back to our election study data, in the local elections, the European Parliament elections and the general election, more than half the people who did not vote said that it was because they could not vote. They were either away from home on the day, they had work commitments or they had caring responsibilities. Some of the headlines about turnout after the election were probably a little too easy. For example, it was suggested that because 59.6% of people voted, 40% of the population do not care enough about politics, or are disenfranchised or apathetic. The story is much more complicated than that. We are going to do some very strong research in the postal voting and advance voting area sometime in the next year with a view to bringing forward recommendations about perhaps making it easier for people to vote.

Collaboration is the key to everything. I touched on this earlier. We are a small organisation so we will reach into seldom heard and seldom seen groups by using organisations, representative groups, etc. as well. We will be very happy to fund them, both in the area of research and in activities and events to encourage their communities and groups to get involved in electoral politics, to get them registered to vote, to teach them how their vote works and how to vote and, more importantly, to turn up on polling day itself to vote.

Dr. Price and Professor Flynn have done some brilliant research on disabled candidates. We should also acknowledge the work of Dr. Vivian Rath who cannot be here with us today. He has been a shining and strong advocate for the disabled sector for many years. He should be applauded for that work. This research work will start that conversation. I hope it will lead to a greater debate nationally on the importance of getting people with a disability more involved in electoral politics. One way is as simple as registering to vote and using their vote at election time. They can also support a disabled candidate or be a disabled candidate themselves. It does not matter where they play a part along the value chain, as long as they get out of bed every day and do something to help in that regard. There you go: two and a half minutes.