Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael)

Cuirim fáilte roimh an tAire Stáit. I welcome the Bill. The Electoral Act 1997 and the Electoral (Amendment) Act 2001 have served us well. Democracy is about people participating through the ballot box and through the political process. The best form of democracy is being able to go into a polling station, put a pencil mark next to the candidate of choice and vote accordingly. The best way to empower people is through the ballot box. Many people in other countries are looking for the right to vote, and we spent a long time in this country looking for political independence.

I welcome the Bill, but I feel personally that it has not gone far enough. I am completely in favour of having a lower threshold of expenditure and having a cap on spending in the years between elections, be they local, national or European. That is a missed opportunity and, like Senator Ellis, I hope that the regulations will be implemented, monitored and policed properly. In future referenda, I hope that some of the groups to which Senator Ellis referred will have their expenses opened up for scrutiny. Democracy is not enhanced by groups such as Libertas, which do not show transparency on how they fund their campaigns.

Senators referred to words such as "renew", "empower", "enhance" and "control". I look forward to the Minister's White Paper on local government, because I have not seen any evidence of local government being renewed by Fianna Fáil led Governments. We have taken away power from local councillors and we have given more power to officials, which is wrong. I have served on a local authority and I believe we should give more power to local politicians because politicians are from the community and 99.9% of them serve the people well. Senator Boyle referred to the power of ideas and the force of personality, which is good in theory and is an effective way to get a message across. As somebody who likes canvassing, it is the most effective way of meeting people. No money can buy the ability to meet people.

This Bill is just one small piece of the jigsaw. The 60-day limit is too short because people have front-loaded spending before the cut-off point in April. Even though this Bill will be enacted and used for the forthcoming local election, we should use it as a precursor to future legislation. It should be the start and we should revisit the legislation to put in a stricter timeframe and a more pronounced spending limit. In fairness to the Minister, the spending limits are good on paper, but they do not go far enough. I listened to the Minister of State's speech and he made some points about distance, geography and so on. We need to put a stop to people spending exorbitant amounts of money on elections, and I include the political parties in that. Much of what we do is a waste and is irrelevant to people. We all need to look at how best we can manage resources and how we can get our message into the homes of the voters.

I have serious concerns about the time period between elections, be they local, national or European. I know of cases where people have spent thousands of euro prior to the calling of elections, yet there has been no accountability for this. That is wrong for a number of reasons. We are putting a certain onus on people to spend money and we are making politics the preserve of the rich by allowing people to spend money between elections. I cannot comprehend how some people can publicly claim that they spent a certain amount, when a tally of their expenditure on letters, posters, billboards, public meetings and so on does not add up. It is time we brought in a cap on what we can spend between elections. I agree with Senator Coffey that meeting people is the only way to electioneer, but we cannot get to everybody during the timeframe of an election campaign.

I also have concerns about the role of the media, although those obviously cannot be addressed in this Bill. We had a very good debate on the role of the media when we debated the Broadcasting Bill 2008 and on the Order of Business. I agree with some of Senator Walsh's comments about this. There is now a blurred line between commentary and analysis in the Irish media. Some of the people are writing tomes of information about elections as opinion pieces and we get confused. A few of them are nothing short of being political hacks and they should desist from doing that.

The Minister looked at the different geographical areas and the different seat allocations in towns, cities and local rural areas. The Carrigaline electoral area in my constituency of Cork South-Central is very sizable and almost as big as Limerick West. We must re-examine the way we divide areas geographically for local elections and the way we allocate seats to areas. It is important we do so. When the Minister was in the House some months ago I stated that although there is already an independent electoral commission which charts the boundaries for local and general elections, there should also be an independent commission to run elections. In 2004 when I first ran for election, I knocked on every door three times, which was a good deal more effective than placing an advertisement in a free sheet or on the back of a bus. I would not be the most photogenic person anyway so such posters would not gain me any votes.