Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The rate collectors have gone but, in addition, the membership of political parties and their proactive nature at local level have greatly diminished over the past couple of decades. That is the problem we are left with, so how does one address it? I am firmly of the view that local authorities should continue to be involved; otherwise, the new electoral commission will have to be provided with enormous physical resources. I am talking about bodies on the ground, or else how will they identify people within those areas? We are talking about 2 million plus people who are eligible to vote. The Minister is right to say that this is a complex issue and one that needs to be addressed separately. In setting up the electoral commission, this work should not be taken away from local authorities. In fact, resources should be put into local authorities to ensure they have more accurate up-to-date registers, rather than taking it away from them and then providing the electoral commission with the resources. It is a half-way house and would be difficult to work in practice. In other words, if it is not broken, why fix it? Local authority structures are already in place so why remove this particular element from them?

In 2010, the fourth report of the Joint Committee on the Constitution of the 30th Dáil contained an extensive review of the electoral system and recommended that an electoral commission be established. It identified problematic areas including drawing up constituency boundaries; filling casual vacancies in by-elections; the method of distributing surplus votes during a count; and ease of access to the ballot box on polling days.

The method of distributing surplus votes during a count will have to come under the remit of the new electoral commission because that is the inherent flaw in the PR system. People have either lost or gained seats as a result of surplus votes being distributed, which are taken from a bundle at the far end of the constituency to where the remaining candidates live. In his seminal book The Government and Politics of Ireland, Basil Chubb highlighted that the distribution of surplus votes was the inherent flaw in the PR system. I know it is an academic exercise now but it is an interesting one that should be examined in the context of the new commission, as should ease of access to the ballot box on polling days.

We pride ourselves on being a high-tech country at the cutting edge of technology. We should, therefore, think outside the box in making it easier for people to vote. There are all sorts of international examples. In America, one can vote online, while postal voting is permitted in England. That has been expanded beyond what we have in Ireland.There is also a need for the electoral commission to examine the question of easy access.

The question of how we encourage young voters is a major issue that must be addressed by Government. The electoral commission would be the right platform on which to do that, and it would start in the schools. It is not enough to have very committed teachers doing the civil, social and political education, CPSE, programme, with which we are all familiar, because that only comes in at second year. Beyond that, those students have no further exposure to the democratic system or how it works. It is only done during the year leading up to the junior certificate. There is a need for a rolling educational programme in our schools, particularly at second level up to leaving certificate.