Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday on the floor of the Dáil, I made reference to a media report on the death of a young woman sleeping rough in my constituency. Subsequently, the organisation that put the information in the public domain has withdrawn it, pending further investigation. As the Minister knows, the issue of the deaths of people experiencing homelessness is one I have been raising with him on a regular basis. I have always argued for the need for accurate and up-to-date information. I want to put on the record of the Dáil that the story as reported in some sections of the media has not been confirmed.

I desperately hope the story is not true and I want to make that clear. I believe the organisation that put that information into the public domain did so in good faith and I raised it in a similar way but it is very important that we treat these matters with great accuracy and therefore, if and when further information becomes available I will comment on it then. I would urge anybody with information on this story to bring that to the attention of the Garda in Clondalkin.

With respect to the motion in front of us, I warmly welcome the establishment of the Electoral Commission. It is something many of us have long argued for and wanted to see established as a matter of urgency. We will support the motion but I want to raise three issues. The first is, as the Minister knows, I submitted a freedom of information request to his Department recently asking for copies of correspondence from the European Commission setting out concerns with respect to aspects of the legislation underpinning the commission that was introduced at a very late stage at the end of the process. Unfortunately, the most recent correspondence from the European Commission has not been released to us but it is our strong belief that they are outlining continued concerns with aspects of the legislation. Given that we have always approached this issue on a cross-party basis and in the interests of a maximum level of transparency, I urge the Minister to put that information in the public domain in order that we can all be clear that this legislation is fully compliant with EU law and if it is not and there are good reasons it is not, we can have an honest and frank debate with respect to that.

As for the appointment of the four ordinary commissioners some eyebrows will be raised that two of the proposed candidates are former elected representatives and members of parties that have a relationship with the Minister's own party. Mr. John Curran is a former Fianna Fáil Deputy and Mr. Alex Attwood is a former Social Democratic and Labour Party, SDLP, MLA. I know both men quite well. I shared a constituency with Mr. Curran and he chaired the Oireachtas Special Committee on Housing and Homelessness in 2016. I know him to be very fair and independent-minded and I wish him well in his time on the commission. I also served on Belfast City Council with Mr. Attwood and while I am not sure my relationship with him at that point in time was as collegial and constructive as it was with Mr. Curran here in the Dáil, he does have considerable experience in terms of his membership of the UK's Electoral Commission and I fully accept the appointments process was fully independent through the Public Appointments Service. However, it is absolutely vital that the commission and its members are fully independent from the Government and are seen to be so. Therefore, given that eyebrows will be raised that two of the four members have a relationship with the party proposing this motion, the Government should make it clear there will be no attempt to interfere with the work of this crucially important body.

It is absolutely crucial that the board is enterprising and innovative and adopts what was clearly the cross-party consensus that we want this to be a body that pushes forward the boundaries in all of its work. There will be some disappointment in some of the circles that gave testimony to our committee during the course of pre-legislative scrutiny that people with a background in political science and with widespread knowledge of electoral commissions globally have not made it on to the board. If there is some way to ensure their expertise is brought to bear in the work, particularly the research on ensuring people who are traditionally excluded or less likely to be involved in the electoral process, but also the evolving area of the interaction between social media and digital technology with electoral processes, it will be absolutely key. We received some really important testimonies from some of the country's leading experts in this field - they are not just leading experts in Ireland but across the European Union - about the rapidly changing pace of digital technology and its interaction with electoral systems, both good and bad. For the commission to do its job it has to have access to that kind of cutting-edge, innovative and enterprising expertise and knowledge. I wish both the members of the commission and the commission well and we look forward to its work. At pre-legislative committee stage, we gave it a very long list of areas of research we think are vital for it to be involved in but independence is key here and the more clear the Government makes that and the easier it will be for the commission to undertake that, the better it will be for all of us.

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