Denis Landy (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am sure the Acting Chairman will give me the same leeway as he gave his colleague on the motion. I welcome the Minister and thank him and the Government for putting forward this proposal, which is set out in the programme for Government. It is true that it has been discussed before and brought to the stage of a report which the then Minister, Deputy John Gormley, produced in 2010, after which it was left idle. I hope the Government goes one step further and that the Minister can look favourably towards Senator Fiach Mac Conghail's amendment. We need to see more than just a Government commitment to discuss it; we need a commitment to act. I hope the Minister has some favourable words for the amendment in order that it can be withdrawn. We all know the difficulties in trying to put together a perfect system.

I will issue a word of warning about the register of electors. I have seen the franchise section in local authorities working on a register of electors. It involves a lot of work and many staff dedicated to the process. They have gone through the information street by street and name by name and it is still not right. That is because people change addresses and register at one address only to leave it later. The feasibility of having a registration system using PPS numbers needs to be discussed because such a system would not require addresses. We do not want to see somebody arriving at a polling station on the day of an election and not having a vote. We have all heard stories about this happening during elections. It is particularly distressing for elderly people and I know of one person, who has now passed on, who was 96 but lost his vote despite living in the same house for 60-odd years. For some strange reason there was no vote in the system for him and there was nothing I or anybody else could do about it on the day.

We did away with town councils because we thought they were not viable. I made the case to the then Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Phil Hogan, for the retention of town councils, as I did within my own party, and now we think they should be reintroduced. As a tailor would say: "You measure twice and cut once." If we decide to take this matter away from local authorities, we must have a better system to replace it, something we did not provide for in respect of town councils.

The costs must also be examined and there needs to be clarity as to whether the current costs of the Department and local authorities will actually shift and how they will be measured to move with a new system. Can we learn from Australia and New Zealand, who already have these systems in place?Will we see a more efficient system as a result of putting this in place? There is the issue of the filling of casual vacancies. There is also the issue of the distribution of surplus votes, which is always very contentious in the political process. There are many things which need to be examined. Unlike previous speakers, I think we need to have a discussion on this and that it should be in an environment committee. We also need to have another opportunity for the broader public and interested people to debate and discuss this.

We need timelines. I hope the Minister, in his contribution, will give us a timeline. This was included in the programme for Government in 2007. We had a report in 2010. No further action was taken. I do not want to see that happen this time round. I commend the Minister and his Department on bringing this forward but I want to see consultation result in action in a timely fashion. I hope we get a positive response to the amendment tabled by my colleague, Senator Fiach Mac Conghail, on the issue of timelines.