Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for allocating to me the remaining part of his time. It is unfortunate that in a debate that will last an hour, there are 50 minutes for opposition statements and seven and a half minutes for the 82 Members on the Government side. If we are talking about electoral reform, perhaps the Business Committee might start with those disproportionate arrangements.

Both the Chairman of the relevant committee and I are anxious to put on record the extensive pre-legislative scrutiny process that took place last year. I think there were seven specific meetings with some held during the depths of Covid and the restrictions. I thank all the members for contributing to that. This week we will hold 12 hours of committee hearings and every Member of the House is welcome to come. There will be many amendments. It is important we debate this because it affects every Member in this House and everyone who will be a Member of the Houses.

There is one area of concern that has not been addressed. I welcome in particular the same-day island voting. Deputy Ó Cuív has worked hard on that and I welcome that progress.

There is the issue of transparency in regard to donations which we will address later. The issue of online political advertising remains regulated, but I regard it as facilitated. I refer to the ban on broadcast media - radio and television. Why are we allowing authoritative news sources to be deprived of revenue activity while permitting online political advertisers to benefit from it? They do not regard themselves as publishers but they will benefit from that advertising. We should ban online political advertising until we have properly regulated this space and until we treat all media outlets equally.

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