Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Any electoral reform is welcome. This reform is long overdue. We are all aware of issues around voter registration, the inaccuracies of the register of electors and poor voter education. Our republic is founded on the sovereignty of the Irish people, but this can be only realised through an electoral system that proactively enables participation, fostering understanding of elections and facilitating as many people as possible to vote.

It is disappointing that such a long-awaited Bill is lacking the necessary ambition to reform our electoral system. It reinforces the status quo, with a few entirely necessary changes in establishing a commission. There are three areas I want to highlight as needing particular attention. First, in establishing the electoral commission, there is an opportunity to facilitate disabled people to vote and stand for election. The Joint Committee on Disability Matters recent report, Ensuring Independent Living and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, noted that the voice of people with disabilities in Ireland is often excluded from decision-making, through low representation of disabled people in the Dáil and the Seanad and low uptake in voting as a result of the inaccessibility of voting procedures. Currently, there are a range of systematic barriers, from inaccessible polling stations and election materials not being available in easy-to-read format to poor infrastructure which limits disabled candidates and politicians from canvassing and building up their profiles.

The Bill mainly refers to disability as a limitation, with one reference to improving communications on referendums for people with visual and hearing impairments. Article 29 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities requires that all appropriate measures be adopted to ensure that people with disabilities have the right to vote and to be elected. These rights are not being realised currently and this Bill does very little to change that.

In essence, this Bill was developed without any consideration for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Departments still have worrying ignorance of the State's obligations and how they are manifest in practice. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the National Disability Authority made very clear recommendations during pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill. These need to be incorporated into the Bill. The electoral commission must be mandated to promote more equal political participation for groups, including people with disabilities and to set and monitor accessibility standards for the use of polling stations. Voter registration and election and referendum materials and forms all need to be accessible. Most significantly, all of these need to be developed in conjunction with disabled people and Disabled Persons Organisations. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities obliges the State to closely consult with and actively involve persons with disabilities, and their representative organisations, in matters affecting them.This has not happened in the context of this Bill.

The pre-legislative scrutiny report makes reference to the Department engaging with the National Disability Authority. This needs to happen, but the Department must also work directly with disabled people's organisations, DPOs. This is a key point the Joint Committee on Disability Matters has emphasised to other Oireachtas committees. On this point, the Bill should also require the commission to engage with disabled people and DPOs on matters impacting their capacity to participate in voting and standing for election.

Second, the commission should be empowered and directed to address other structural inequalities. The housing committee made a clear recommendation on this matter, which is not reflected in the Bill. There needs to be a strong legal commitment for the commission to engage with communities historically under-represented in electoral matters. We need systematic and cultural changes if we are to ensure greater diversity in decision-making. Submissions on the Bill highlight this. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties recommends that the commission have a role in candidacy support, while the National Women’s Council of Ireland urges that the commission develop standards in political discourse that are free from discriminatory rhetoric and hate speech.This is an area in respect of which the Bill could have considerable transformative potential. Unfortunately, the ambition is lacking. To provide that the commission could or might do something is very different from it being mandated to act on these issues. Discrimination, sexism, racism and ableist thinking all need be actively confronted. The commission, as envisaged by the Government, will not confront any of these issues.

Third, the commission must be empowered to work on extending the franchise to as many residents as possible. Ensuring that more people are eligible to vote enhances our representative democracy and strengthens integration. The commission should work towards extending general election voting rights to non-citizen residents. Currently, all residents can vote in local elections. This principle should be extended to general elections. There is considerable support in political theory and academic research to show that permitting resident non-citizens to vote strengthens democracy. There are people living in Ireland for decades, paying taxes and contributing to their communities who cannot vote in general elections.

As was noted in the pre-legislative scrutiny, we have a needlessly complex and expensive naturalisation process, which is a barrier to accessing citizenship, leaving people without a right to vote. This is an obvious area the commission could address. Related to this is voting for 16- and 17-year-olds. In 2013, the Constitutional Convention recommended that the voting age be lowered to 16. No action has been taken on this in almost a decade. The only thing this Bill has to offer is preregistration for voting at 18. Scotland, Norway and other countries have demonstrated the positive impact of extending the franchise to 16- and 17-year-olds. While this Government and those which preceded it have ignored the convention’s recommendations, along with many other issues, I must acknowledge Senator Fintan Warfield’s work in progressing the Electoral (Amendment) (Voting at 16) Bill 2016. I encourage the Government to support this Bill and empower the commission to help young people realise this right.

This Bill is necessary but to label it a reform Bill when it largely reinforces the status quois wrong. It needs to have greater direction and ambition in creating a more proactively inclusive system to enable all eligible people to vote and stand for election. It is also an opportunity to extend the franchise and strengthen our democracy. I hope these sentiments are ones the Minister of State, Deputy Hildegarde Naughton, agrees with. I encourage the Minister to improve the Bill to make it truly reforming legislation.

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