Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I have spelled out the terms of reference, which are broad and will allow people put forward what they believe are the various dimensions of Irish life regarding influences, both positive and negative, and the levels of participation and engagement. Having seen many of the submissions, both written and e-mail, on this, there is an enormous interest on the part of all kinds of groups, bodies and individuals. A task force could be at it forever but the existing reports, including the White Paper on community involvement, what NESC and NESF have done and the various reports they produced, and what has been done by ESRI, provide a good basis for that within the terms of reference I mentioned. The task force will get at that and give some good advice on the issue.

Regarding Deputy Sargent's point on the register, the Minister, Deputy Roche, is dealing with that and it is best left with him. He has been talking to numerous bodies about that and it is best to leave that process with him because it will be far quicker than this process. That does not prevent people making comments about voter activity in this area but the physical work of improving the current register by advertising and increasing people's interest in voter participation will continue. To answer the age question, 18 is fine and I do not see any difficulty about that.

On the Swiss idea the Deputy raised, not many of Switzerland's initiatives are on the constitution but its practice is to allow people, when local issues arise within the cantons, to have plebiscites on those issues. Five or six times a year they put forward popular votes initiatives and decisions in various ways and the practice is that they get very high voter turnout. They recently had an initiative about traffic and 86% of the people voted on a Sunday afternoon between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Obviously it is a practice with them——

See this speech in context