Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In the few moments available to me, I wish to agree fully with every line of the Minister's speech. Therefore, I will not refer to any points he made as he summed up my views on the issue. I thank him for his leadership in this area. I also wish to acknowledge the work of the Constitutional Convention. I believe that the convention has a solid future, notwithstanding the current narrow remit. I would ask the Government to extend its remit, perhaps even on a permanent basis.

My concern this evening is with the operation and planning for the referendum. I believe that low turnout for referendums is a major cause for concern, and we need to review radically how we do them. Any future referendums must be carefully planned and orchestrated. The recent result of the Seanad referendum should be examined in detail to consider why people voted as they did, and why 60% of the electorate did not bother at all to vote. Qualitative research on this topic is vital, as we need to determine how opinions were formed on the subject matter, and how these views were changed or confirmed during the course of the campaign. We need to know how and why a majority in favour of abolition four weeks before the campaign became a minority on the day. Factors such as the popularity or otherwise of the Government, the communication of the message and the motivation of the voter all affected turnout. We need to obtain hard data on voter behaviour before we go to the polls again.

Recent limited research underlines the need for a publicity campaign to be carried out over a much longer period of time, the information or publicity to be transmitted in different ways than through the Referendum Commission, and that the campaign should be broadened way beyond the narrow party political elite that we have seen in recent referendums. Without detailed voter research, we are left with speculation by pundits and armchair experts which makes for great political entertainment and post-mortems, but is of little or no scientific value. If the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government does not conduct the research itself, then I suggest that a sum of money be made available to academia or political scientists so that they can do the job, because it is crucially important.

Aspects of the ludicrous McKenna and Coughlan Supreme Court judgments need to be addressed.

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