Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Deputy Ó Cuív on tabling this motion. His timing turned out to be quite prescient when one considers the events that happened on Inis Mór last weekend. The issue of voting highlights the isolation of the islands and the events of last weekend show that it is not just something that happens at election time and that the isolation of islands can be a factor at any given moment, in particular at this time of year.

It always strikes me as odd that islanders go to polling stations in many cases three or four days before polling day. It means they miss the last few days of a campaign and the notion of having a media moratorium is a complete joke given there is no moratorium to allow islanders time to think about their choice free from the barrage of media coverage of any given election. The time has come to give the flexibility to returning officers to make the call, that if conditions are conducive then the people of the islands can vote on the day of the election like people in any other part of the country.

As a country we do not treat islanders particularly well, which is ironic as we are an island nation. The proposer of this motion can take enormous credit for the role he played as Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs and as Aire Stáit do ghnóthaí Gaeltachta.

He is somebody who put his money where his mouth is in terms of investing in islands and island communities and trying to put some sort of sustainable basis in place for communities to grow. It is to his credit that many of the infrastructural investments and social decisions were taken to sustain island communities but we need once again to renew our interest in the islands. I welcome some of the announcements in the budget, particularly in respect of education and reversing some of the worst cuts made by the previous Government.

I caught the end of Deputy Eamon Ryan's speech. We have to lay out a sustainable future for our islands, be it in tourism, some form of fishing or some type of new enterprise that could use wind energy as a basis for island-produced power and to export any excess energy. This debate is giving us the opportunity to reflect on the islands and their economic future.

It also gives us a chance to talk about voting and voting systems. On a dark February night during the general election, I was taken aback by the number of polling stations I visited after 6 p.m. that were very difficult to access because there were no outside lights. If we, as candidates, find polling stations difficult to access, how do voters, including older people, find them? During the rush-hour period from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., many polling stations are quite dangerous as cars converge in the dark of the night. The time has come to lay out a basic standard for polling stations that will apply at all times of the day in terms of their exteriors and interiors, to which we pay a lot of attention. It is bizarre to think that we have rules that say one cannot put up a poster outside a polling station, yet we do not have rules to say that there should be exterior lights to allow voters to see where they are going as they enter. It is bizarre to think that one is not allowed to take a photograph in a polling station but that one must use the light on one's phone in order to make one's entry. We seem to have the rules in the wrong places. The time has come to ask why we still use schools as default polling stations. Why do we close down our entire school system for a day when there are community halls, post offices and other facilities available? I am sure that with that kind of income for a day, post offices in rural areas would open their premises and allow available space to be used as an appropriate polling station.

Be it on an island or on the mainland, there are many issues with our voting system. We need a national voting authority. The notion of every local authority having responsibility for voting within their areas is ancient. In respect of a national system with registration being far easier and the use of online technology in terms of registration, I still prefer the peann luaidhe, as a former Taoiseach put it, in terms of voting and counting but we must embrace the 21st century in terms of how we vote - not just for island communities but elsewhere. As an island nation, we cannot stand up for our rights and complain that we are ignored when we ignore those islands off our own coast on a daily basis.

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