Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

The Electoral (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2012 is a short but important Bill to enable the electoral register to be used for selecting citizen members of the constitutional convention. When consideration was being given to the establishment of the constitutional convention, the Government decided there should be 100 members, of which 66 would be ordinary citizens. As set out in the resolution made in this House yesterday, membership of the convention will consist of "66 citizens entitled to vote at a referendum, randomly selected so as to be broadly representative of Irish society".

Section 13A of the Electoral Act 1992, inserted by section 4 of the Electoral (Amendment) Act 2001, provides that it is an offence to use information in the register other than for electoral or other statutory purposes. Such a statutory purpose is provided for example in the Juries Act for the selection of members of juries.

There is in place an edited register which may be used for any purpose. That register includes about 300,000 voters who have opted to have their names included on it. That is a relatively small percentage of the total electorate, which stood at 3.144 million for the referendum in May. Clearly, therefore, the edited register would not be adequate for our purpose.

The constitutional convention is not established by statute and it is necessary, therefore, to provide in the Electoral Acts for the use of information in the register in the selection of citizen members of the convention. As the Taoiseach has informed the House, a polling company will be engaged to select 66 people on the electoral register who are representative of the population generally in terms of gender, age, social class and region. The selection process will be overseen by the independent chairperson of the convention.

Section 1 of the Bill amends Section 13A of the Electoral Act 1992 by inserting a new subsection. This will provide that information in the electoral register may be used for the purpose of selecting citizens of Ireland to participate in the convention. Section 2 of the Bill contains standard provisions dealing with the Title, citation and construction of the Bill.

The sole purpose of this Bill is to provide in statute for the use of the electoral register in the selection of citizen members of the convention. It is a Bill to facilitate an important operational aspect of setting up the convention. I commend it to the House.

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