Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Those of us in rural areas - I am sure the situation is exacerbated in urban areas - are finding it increasingly difficult because of the transient nature of our population in the past 12 to 15 years, where the population of the country has significantly increased. There are people who one finds during the canvass are not on the register every time an election comes round. It is a citizen's responsibility to put his or her name on the register but unfortunately not all citizens take their civic duty as a matter of importance. That is human nature. There needs to be some sort of overarching commission that would oversee this in conjunction with the local authorities. There is no question but that there is a flaw in how the electoral registers are drawn up. Even in this day and age of modern technology, it is extraordinary that at every election one finds that people are not on the register. Urgent work is required to look at this and see how we can address it.

In fairness to citizens - I am sure it is echoed by colleagues on all sides of the House and by the Minister himself - people want to vote. I have found that when people discover they are not on register they are very disappointed. Of course, the commitment of the Irish people to the democratic process is regularly confirmed by the significantly high turnout that we have across all of our elections. Sadly, there has been a dangerous decline in the turnout of the vote in referenda on the constitutional amendments. This should be addressed by making issues more clear. The referendum commission is set up especially to address that at the appropriate times. A permanent electoral commission would be able to establish the reasons that people do not vote or if the question that was put to the people was not framed properly. The commission could do this work.

There is the question of rigorously policing party finance even though we have the Standards in Public Office Commission, SIPO. Would there be a continuing need for an organisation such as SIPO if one were to establish a permanent electoral commission? Rather than having a list of quangos that are looking into the lives, times and activities of politicians and those who engage in the political process that one specific organisation could do that work. There is also a need to promote research on key questions relating to such matter as how to improve turnout and so on.

The appearance of our ballot papers have changed significantly over the years. The basic structure is unchanged even though there has been changes made, including the introduction of party logos and candidate photographs. There are counting rules. We would argue that the procedure of counting votes owes more to convenience than fairness, a criticism that we have made of the system when we proposed to replace it in 1968, but it was not successful.

I acknowledge that we have set up boundary commissions on a regular basis but it is interesting that the 1937 Constitution specified a minimum of three seats per constituency and while initially district magnitude varied between three and nine seat constituencies, large constituencies were soon discontinued. I can remember in a previous Seanad when we were debating some similar subject that I went into detail along with colleagues on all sides of the Houses about the historical precedence that had been set by our founding fathers where, at the foundation of the State, there were seven seats in the Sligo-Leitrim constituency. I know the same was true of even County Tipperary.