Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Last week I went on a walkabout around my home city of Limerick in the South Circular Road area, a beautiful part of Limerick city. I spoke with a diverse group of people, including students, retired people, renters, homeowners, parents, grandparents, toddlers and teenagers. Many of these people can vote in elections and many of them are not able to do so but would like to if they knew how to register. I was explaining the long process of registering to vote to a worker from Lebanon and to a student from Japan. There were looks of confusion when I tried to explain that process of registration. As we were talking, two things became clear. First, a large number of people are not aware that they can vote in some elections in Ireland. Second, they do not know how to exercise that right.

This is not a new challenge. Many groups in Ireland are disenfranchised and under-represented in the political system because of our archaic electoral register and that point has been made clearly by most of the speakers during this debate so far. Many groups are not included on the register, in no small part due to the challenging registration process, which can prevent some people from voting. Young people and minority groups are especially affected by this and in 2018 an estimated 150,000 young people aged 18 to 29 years-of-age were not registered to vote. Conversely, a study in 2016 suggested that there could be as many as 500,000 names on the register that should not be there.

Election experts from an independent academic body, the Electoral Integrity Project, evaluated electoral processes in 164 individual countries against international standards and global norms for the appropriate conduct of elections. The 2018 report shows that Ireland rates well for its electoral laws and procedures, its party registration candidate access and the dissemination of results. The counting of votes under the single transferable vote system is recognised as fair and impartial, as are our electoral boundaries and the process of districting. However, Ireland is ranked 137th in the world for its voter registration processes. We are grouped with Tanzania, Honduras, Ethiopia and Kenya and we are way down towards the bottom of the class in the accuracy of our electoral register. We are the worst performing country in the OECD in this regard. The good news is that the core of Irish elections is strong but more can be done to bring the process into the digital age.

I welcome the work that has been done on modernising the registration system. We need a system that will both make it easier for voters to register and improve the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in it. We need a single and continually updated register, to which electors can be added at any point. It must be simplified online with paper registrations and there should be a central national electoral registered database with the use of PPS numbers for data verification processes and provision for anonymous registrations for people whose safety may be at risk if their name and address were to be published. We also need pre-registration for 16 and 17 year-olds. These will all make the process of registering to vote more accessible and efficient and the information contained on the register will be more accurate as a result.

I would like to acknowledge the establishment of the statutory and independent electoral commission for Ireland. There have been several attempts in the past to establish an electoral commission and this is the first time we have moved past a report or a consultation, which is welcome. Many groups in Ireland are under-represented in all levels of governance. It is important that both local and national government chambers are more representative of the people who live in this country. The electoral commission will play a central role in strengthening administrative processes and in addressing the issue of under-representation and low turnouts through its advisory, research and voter education function. There is room for further reform and I understand this will be the task of the commission. I would like to see work done on automatic registration, lowering the voting age and postal voting among other issues.

I welcome this Bill and commend the hard work undertaken by the Minister and Ministers of State involved and by the Department officials to get it this far. The provisions in this Bill, namely the establishment of the electoral commission, the modernisation of the electoral register, the regulation of online political advertising and a provision for pandemic elections will contribute greatly to improving transparency, participation and representation of the diverse groups living in Ireland. They are much needed reforms that will allow more citizens to have their say, improve public trust in our elections and strengthen Irish elections and democracy.

See this speech in context