Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)

Having listened to the Minister and Deputy Terence Flanagan speak about this Bill and considering the Dáil has been in recess for a number of months, I wondered what would I expect to hear debated in the Chamber today if I was a visitor in the Visitors Gallery. If I was a school boy leaving the Visitors Gallery today and I asked my teacher what Members were talking about, the response would be that politicians were talking about themselves again.

We are discussing an important issue but given the day that it is in it and what has happened over several months, serious questions must be asked about the priority issues for the Government. This Bill has been doing the rounds for quite a while and the issue does not need to be resolved before Christmas. According to everyone's calculations, the next general election will not take place for another four years and there may well be another census before then which will make the facts and figures over which we are deliberating today obsolete. A school boy leaving the Visitors Gallery today would be of the impression that most of the time what happens in Leinster House has little connection to what is happening outside it.

Having said that, important points need to be made about this Bill. The Labour Party fully supports the decisions on constituency boundaries made by the commission which my Labour Party colleague, Deputy Brendan Howlin, provided for in the Electoral Act 1997. The Government and the Oireachtas should accept the final report of the commission and enact legislation to provide for the changes recommended. The key aspect of this is the independence of the commission, to which I will refer later.

I have full confidence in the independence and integrity of the members of the commission. However, like the rest of us, they are not infallible, which, unfortunately, some of the recommendations made in the most recent report seem to indicate. We do not know how the commission reaches its conclusions as, quite properly, it conducts its business in private. The current procedure is that the commission is established and given its terms of reference by the Minister. This is based on provisions in section 6 of the Electoral Act 1997. The commission then invites submissions from the public and interested groups and in due course it issues its final report. There is a sequence in place that needs serious examination. The Minister indicated the retiming of the commission in regard to the publication of the register but there are outstanding matters there.

In reviewing the way in which the current system is scheduled, I strongly believe the law should be changed to allow for a two-stage process prior to finalisation of the report. This could be done by the commission, having considered initial submissions, publishing a draft report and inviting further submissions from the public and interested parties. That is not provided for in the Bill.

There is a problem in respect of the sequence in that a fait accompli is being commented on by Members and the public. I am sure the people of North Kerry and Limerick West have opinions on this. However, there is no facility for them to give their views because the process has moved on. If such a provision was in place, it would at least allow people, who believe a particular recommendation is illogical, as the North Kerry-Limerick West case may well be, irrational or inconsistent with the commission's terms of reference, to make their point.

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