Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I generally welcome many of the measures proposed in the legislation. Having a time limit of six months for the calling of a by-election is generally a good idea, although I agree with Deputy Tom Hayes that allowing a few extra months might be preferable. When one considers the logistics, it is never appropriate to hold an election in the months of July and August because many people are out of the country on holidays. Therefore, if a Member was to die in the early part of the year, the by-election would have to be held within four or five months to be completed by June and a six-month provision would not allow us to wait until September when the holiday season was over, people were back to work and the schools were open again. I suggest, therefore, that we consider the practicalities of providing for a six-month period, although the principle is correct.

I generally support the proposal regarding the Constituency Commission which will get on with its work. The third proposal concerns reducing spending limits and the reimbursement of expenses of candidates at Presidential elections. This is the issue on which I want to focus, not just as it relates to Presidential elections but to all elections. During the last Dáil, in April 2008, the Joint Committee on the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, of which I was Chairman, issued a report entitled, First Report - The Future of the Electoral Register in Ireland and Related Matters. All members of the committee signed up to the general ideas espoused in and the contents of the report. The Minister, Deputy Hogan, was a member of the committee, as were Deputies Bannon, Ciarán Lynch and Tuffy, and the then Senators Hannigan and Coffey, now Deputies, as well as the then Senator Cannon, now a Minister of State. Therefore, many members of the current Government parties were involved and agreed to the contents of the report.

The key issue on which I wish to focus in the context of the report is the cost of elections. I am very disappointed the Minister is not present, although I make no political point in that regard, as he is obviously otherwise committed. Nonetheless, I will try to make a point of speaking to him personally on this issue in the coming weeks to express my views to him. We are discussing reducing the amount that can be reimbursed to Presidential election candidates from €260,000 to €200,000 and the amount candidates can spend from their own resources from €1.3 million to €750,000. Therefore, for example, if there were four candidates in a Presidential election, the reduction of €60,000 per candidate would give a total saving of €240,000. While that sounds significant, it is not the issue. That is the point I want to make to the Minister.

I wish to quote figures for the 2007 general election, the election studied in the 2008 report of the joint committee of which the Minister was part. The most minor cost is the sum that must be reimbursed to candidates. Based on parliamentary replies from the then Minister for Finance, the cost of payments to returning officers in all the constituencies in the 2007 general election was €15,443,187.57. In addition, as shown in the report - the information was probably acquired by means of replies to parliamentary questions - the amount paid to An Post was €12,496,308.93. This gives a ballpark figure of €28 million for the cost of running a national election campaign, which includes the payments to returning officers for organising the counts and making arrangements for polling day, as well as to An Post, the biggest component of which is the litir um thoghchán, an issue to which I will return. My point is that while there will be a saving to the taxpayer in respect of refunds to candidates, the cost of staging a general election is about €28 million; therefore, the saving will not even represent 1% of total election expenditure. What we are doing in cutting the cost to the taxpayer of election campaigns looks populist, given the small saving involved. I am not suggesting an effort should not be made, but there is scope to make massive savings in two areas. One is the costs of returning officers, which I will highlight using as examples two five-seat constituencies, the information on which is contained in the report cited which is available in the Oireachtas Library and which I am sure is in the possession of the Minister's office and the Department of Finance, from where the costs of returning officers are paid.

Laois-Offaly is a large five-seat constituency in which the cost to the returning officer in the 2007 general election was €500,000 which I presume was money well spent. In the same election in another five-seat constituency, Wicklow, the cost to the returning officer was €780,000. There is no good reason it should have cost the returning officer €280,000 more to pay his staff in Wicklow than in a neighbouring five-seat constituency. If we want to make savings, this issue must be examined. The scale of fees is set out, with so much per counter, so much per person on polling day, so much for overtime and so on. It is all included, yet there are enormous differentials. If savings need to be made in the interests of taxpayers, this is the first area that should be considered.

The real issue to be considered in making savings - this is my suggestion to the Minister - is the cost of deliving to what we call the election address. This is the biggest single cost to the taxpayer. One point, in particular, aggravates the public. If there are four or five voters living in a house and six or seven candidates sending items to their address, 30 items of correspondence or more might arrive, all costing 55 cent to be delivered. The excess must be eliminated. The cost in sending this correspondence in the 2007 general election was €1.6 million in the case of Fianna Fáil, €1.6 million in the case of Fine Gael and €1.6 million in the case of any party which sent correspondence nationwide. The total cost to the taxpayer was €11 million. As I said at the Committee of Public Accounts, there is time before holding the Presidential election for the Department of Finance-----

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