Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

I propose to share time with Deputy Kathleen Lynch and Deputy Martin Ferris.

I welcome the opportunity of discussing this legislation. It is not very significant legislation. It establishes some limits for expenditure in elections but does not go so far as accomplishing the Taoiseach's commitment relating to either the cap or the limits. This will be dealt with by the amendments proposed by my colleague, Deputy Ciarán Lynch. This should have been an opportunity for a Minister in his first term in office, who speaks a great deal about reform, to do something substantial.

Anybody who is serious about local government reform, and I have a personal view on the issue, would have reformed the City and County Management (Amendment) Act. There is a very serious problem with local government in terms of participation in decision making, and the recent changes have not worked. Those who will come out of these elections will find themselves on a plethora of special committees, policy committees, different forms of co-operation with an alleged voluntary sector, that sometimes meet and sometimes do not, but all of which are entirely dominated by the director of services. The director of services is the tier immediately below the tier of city or county manager, but the latter tier not been reformed in recent decades. It is an antiquated Act.

I was listening to some of the contributions and I wish to explain why the city and county management is relevant. It is sometimes assumed that abuses at elections are somehow or other an Irish thing in a post-colonial context. K. Theodore Hoppen has written about electoral abuses. The highest point of electoral abuses is in fact in the late 19th century. If people look at estate records they will see that in the estate that is left over an enormous amount of money was spent on whiskey and on lemons for the punch that was served on polling day. The notion of going from door to door to canvass began in the 19th century. In addition, the practice known as groaning developed, whereby one collected a person in the parish, and then one went from house to house collecting other people. When one came to a hostile person, everyone groaned collectively so that the district inspector's report stated that there was no violence but there was much groaning.

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