Derek McDowell (Labour)

My party, the Labour Party, is party to the general consensus in welcoming the Bill. Senator Kitt mentioned that the late James Tully was party to the creative reorganisation of the constituencies in the 1970s and if anybody in the Labour Party needed persuading that that was not the way to do it, the end result of the 1977 election, the outcome of which was not exactly as the then Minister Tully had intended, was sufficient persuasion. We are all now committed to the idea that it is an essential part of our democracy that an independent commission should draw up the constituencies. It does not necessarily follow from that that we should remain wed forever to the terms of reference, which I understand are set out in the 1997 Act. I will deal with some of those terms of reference shortly but I hope the Chair will forgive me for starting my contribution on a parochial basis.

It is interesting to note, although I am not sure anybody has done so, that the area of the country where most seats have been lost is the north side of Dublin city. Over a period of approximately ten or 15 years we have gone from having four, four-seat constituencies to three, three-seat constituencies and one, four seater. We have actually lost three seats on the north side of Dublin city in that period. I am not in any sense criticising the commission for that. It simply reflects the changing demographics of the city and the county.

Many of the houses in the estates in the constituency I used to represent in places like Beaumont, Artane and parts of Coolock, which were built in the 1970s and which until recently had four, five or six voters in them, now have just two. In their late 20s or even early 30s in some cases, the children managed to find homes in the constituency represented by the Minister and other formerly green pastures of rural Ireland and are no longer part of Dublin. That is more of a social commentary than anything else. I am not suggesting we should continue to represent people who are now living in Kildare and Meath but it is a debate for another day, which has as much to do with housing policy as with anything else. I accept that we now have three seats in Dublin North-Central. There is a clear left-wing quota in that constituency, even based on the result of the last general election, and it is my business and that of my party to ensure we win that seat.

There is an issue about three-seat constituencies. Traditionally, three seaters were based in rural Ireland for the good solid reasons of geography that Senator Kitt mentioned and they are still largely based in the south west of the country. However, there is a specific issue about urban three seaters, which is a relatively new phenomenon. It is not just true in Ireland but in many other countries that there is a greater diversity of political views in urban areas than in rural areas. We can talk at length as to the reason that should be the case but it is a clearly established fact and therefore a greater variety of parties are looking to contest. There is also a variety of Independents looking to contest in urban areas as well, although that is less obvious.

It is also practically more appropriate to have five-seat constituencies in urban areas because the geography is much simpler. In the constituency Senator Kitt represents, I suspect one could travel for 40, 50 or 60 km. and remain within the constituency whereas in the constituency I used to represent one could not travel more than five or ten minutes on a bus without going outside the constituency. There is no comparison, therefore, in terms of the practicalities of looking to represent a constituency like that and there is no serious reason to have urban three seaters.

In urban areas in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and so on, five seaters should be the norm and in principle there should not be any objection to six or seven-seat constituencies if that were considered appropriate. As I understand it, this is not a provision in the Constitution. It is a provision in the 1997 Act and there is no reason we cannot change the terms of reference to make that provision.

The integrity of county boundaries has been spoken about and I am as sympathetic as everybody else to the position in Leitrim but there is also an issue in the Dublin area about the integrity of the city boundary in terms of the practicality of representing an area covered by more than one local authority. The constituency of Dublin North-East, for example, covers both Fingal County Council and Dublin City Council and I am aware it causes difficulty for the three Members who represent that Dáil constituency. In looking at the terms of reference when we next come to do that exercise, we should give some thought to including the integrity of city boundaries also as something that should be considered by the commission when it examines those issues.

One aspect that struck me in the Minister's contribution today and his contribution in the other House was the emphasis we have always put on the ratio as between the population and the Deputy. In the past, that has been reflected typically in the ratio of voters to Deputies but in the future that is less likely to be the case because immigrants are entitled to register but may not necessarily vote. One way or another they are included in the census. As long as they are living in a particular house on a particular night, they are part of the census and are therefore considered to be part of the population of the country.

Regarding the constitutional provision, therefore, they are counted in terms of deciding the ratio and the number of seats in a particular constituency but the overwhelming likelihood is that many of them are here temporarily and they will not vote. In some constituencies, therefore, where there is a significant immigrant community we are likely to find a significant divergence in future years in the ratio of population to Deputy and in the ratio of voters to Deputies. That is something to which we must give some consideration. I appreciate that this is a constitutional provision which poses a difficulty but it is something we must be aware of in years to come because there will be constituencies in which perhaps many thousands of immigrants live, some of whom will have the right to vote but many of whom may not exercise that vote. We have to be conscious of the possible distorting effect that may have in years to come.

Other speakers mentioned the state of the register, which is becoming an increasing problem for all of us, but it can be resolved. Whether we use the PPS number, a passport or another form of ID, it must be possible to, for example, ensure voters are only registered once. If a person provided a PPS number as a means of registration, there should be a central register to tell that the person was already registered in a different constituency, so that person's details could be deleted from the other constituency.

This is where the major problem arises. Those who move house might be anxious to register in their new constituency but, more often than not, I suspect, they do not de-register in their old constituency. Depending on how efficient the local authority is, it can be some time before they are removed from the register in the old constituency. We have a position where some hundreds of thousands of voters are illegally registered in two constituencies, although one would hope they are not actually using two votes.

Surely it is not beyond our wit to organise a solution. I am open to the idea of ID cards for multiple uses in the future. I accept issues arise as to how that would be organised, how they are used and for what purpose. However, if an ID card is not for discussion, let us use some means we already have, be it the PPS number, passport or otherwise, so we can at least ensure double registration does not happen, or we are aware of it if it does.

The Minister of State referred to the 2006 census. There is a real issue in this regard. It is probably fair to say that if there is only a slight or manageable increase in population, there will not be a serious constitutional issue at the next election. However, it is possible or even likely there will be a significant increase in population indicated by the preliminary figures in next year's census, which may provoke serious constitutional issues about the representative nature of the constituencies. I urge the Government not to close this book just yet. If we are talking about relatively minor deviations, I do not think anybody will get particularly upset. However, there is a real possibility of serious deviations. If that happens, the Government must be open to the possibility of setting up a commission, if only to consider those areas of the country where deviations arise. If that is not done, a serious constitutional issue could result, one that we should not ignore.

Others, including Senator Bannon, referred to the issue of voting at weekends. I was going to say the jury is out on this issue but it has probably come back in. If memory serves, we experimented with weekend voting in one of the Tipperary South by-elections. On that occasion, the turnout was significantly higher than it had been at the previous election, which was held on a weekday. It is beyond doubt that weekends are more convenient for a significant number of people. We should not wait for the turnout to fall close to 50% or below, which it will do in 20 years if we do not proactively take measures to make it easier to vote.

The easiest measure we can take has to be to change the voting day to a weekend day, or perhaps one and a half or two days. Such a change should be made immediately. We should also look to use technology to ensure that while people should have to turn up to a polling station, they do not necessarily have to turn up at the polling station where they are registered. The register should be available electronically so a voter can use his or her card to vote at any polling station on election day, provided his or her identity can be verified. We must consider such measures now rather than doing it in a panicky way in ten years, as we look in a semi-puzzled way at why turnout figures have reduced.

On the other hand, I am not sympathetic to the idea of extending postal voting, which has been used in the United States and most recently in the UK. While Ireland is particularly restrictive in this area and perhaps we need to consider some sort of liberalisation, the least we can expect in terms of democratic commitment from citizens who want to have their voice heard is that they will turn up at a particular location on a given day to register their vote. I do not like the idea of there being three or four postal voting cards on a kitchen table, all to be filled out by the same person, although they may belong to other members of the same family. However, while we should require the people to present in person, we should also consider the good case that has been made for postal voting, for example, for people with disabilities.

Much has been made — I will not add more to it — of the e-voting fiasco. I was one of those who instinctively supported the idea because it struck me as being a modern and efficient way of voting. However, having listened to the debate last year, I changed my mind. We should not easily remove one of those elements of politics which seems to be of some interest to the population, namely, the count on the day after polling. As some of the worst days of my life have been spent in count stations, I take no particular pleasure in the memory of counts. Nonetheless, it is clear that it is a day on which, and a way in which citizens interact with the political system. That is not unimportant and we should be slow to change it.

An issue that has not been touched upon is that of the correction of the Schedule to the Electoral Act 1997 following the Kelly case. I accept the principle that Members of the Houses should not be allowed to use that position in a way that gives them advantages over candidates who are not Members. However, one aspect we need to seriously consider is the major advantage Ministers have. I accept in principle that Ministers are entitled to constituency offices as they will probably have a greater volume of constituency business than those Members who are not Ministers. However, they should not be allowed to have five or in some cases many more civil servants dealing with constituency business during election time. It is not a matter of not reckoning for this; it should not be allowed in the first place.

My party supports the Bill. We accept the general principle of the commission, whatever about the individual details, which many of us might be nervous about. The principle is a good one, and one we support.