Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I take this opportunity to thank the convention for its fabulous work. This includes not only the chair, Tom Arnold, and the staff but in particular, the citizen members, many of whom were engaging with a political concept they had never engaged with before in the detailed manner they did over a good number of weekends earlier this year and last year. As an experiment in participatory democracy, it was a worthwhile concept. It should be replicated along with whatever lessons need to be learned from operating it to deal with some of the other issues that Irish society needs to get to grips with.

The advantage of the convention is that it had a cross-current of all Irish society but it did not make decisions. It made decisions among its membership and sent reports to us for us to decide on matters. It made recommendations about referenda. At the end of the day, whatever comes of our deliberations on its reports, the referenda that come from that will be decided by all of the people. The weekends when I attended the convention were very useful because sometimes we have our own presumptions about where we stand. At each of the tables, there was a range of different members of the public as well as other elected representatives and it was good to be able to tease out some of the concepts and logic behind their positions. In this case, it was a very interesting debate that was facilitated by the expert panels in and around the proportional representation through the single transferable vote, PRSTV, and mixed-member proportional representation, MMP, systems. It got into the nuts and bolts of the various electoral systems in different parts of Europe and elsewhere. It addressed the benefits and pitfalls. For many of us, the political scientists were able to outline pitfalls of the approaches I and possibly others have around the voting systems. They were able to highlight pitfalls relating to the electoral commission being permanent or the ballot paper being in a certain format. Despite all of that, we then as a convention put the proposals to a vote and it allowed the members of the convention to make decisions which are reflected in the report.

One of the strongest recommendations made by the convention was that the electoral commission should be made permanent. The view was that it should be mentioned in the Constitution which would give it a standing and an independence over and above that which it enjoys at the moment and that it is not just to deal with referenda and elections as they appear. The view was that the electoral commission should have the power to ensure that, if at all possible, the electoral register is 100%. The aim was for it to be a rolling register and that it would play a role in designing the ballot papers.

One of the recommendations was that we should move from alphabetical ordering of ballot papers to a random ordering. This recommendation was endorsed by 67% of delegates at the convention. That is a significant proportion of a small group.

The convention also endorsed positions that I have long shared. It was originally intended under the PR-STV system to have constituencies of more than five seats, and only in extreme circumstances were there to be three or four seats. While the last commission has moved in that direction, thankfully it did not go so far as to propose constituencies of between six and nine seats. Constituencies for local elections are that large, but Dáil constituencies are smaller. The problems associated with such an approach were discussed at the convention. Deputies in a very large constituency might not be as accessible as might be preferred, notwithstanding the criticisms of clientelism. This was one of the more interesting debates at the convention. The citizen members of the convention asked Deputies about our workload. Some of them were originally critical of us for spending too much time on local issues, but when we explained that we would concentrate less on local issues if constituents stopped raising them with us, they told us they wanted us to deal with these issues. Concern was expressed about the potential for larger constituencies to become unwieldy in terms of representing communities. We might end up carving constituencies into smaller portions, much as happens in Britain, where one MP represents a small constituency under the first-past-the-post system. That would be the result if a constituency comprised counties Limerick and Kerry or two Dublin constituencies. For those of us who are political practitioners, it was interesting to observe how the nuances of politics can be lost on the general public. When decisions are made on the convention's recommendations, I hope we take account of the need for more education on how politics works. Much of the negativity towards politicians is based on ignorance. I do not mean this in a negative way; it is because people have not been taught about politics in school. Some of the negativity stems from media onslaughts on politicians and the assertion that we are in politics for our own good rather than to further the common good. An electoral commission should be enshrined in the Constitution, and the sooner that happens the better. It can be established on a legislative basis, but it would have greater standing and could be given other functions if it had a constitutional underpinning.

The Constitutional Convention was a useful exercise in democracy. The Good Friday Agreement envisaged an all-Ireland civic forum. If such a forum ever comes about, it should be modelled on the convention. It allowed us to grapple with ideas and concepts which could form the basis for us to legislate on what is happening in society. Such an approach might make us act more quickly than we would otherwise intend.

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