Mr. Joe O'Toole:

With the permission of the House, I will deal with the direct questions posed and Dr. Manning will wrap up.

I will deal, first, with what was not part of our role. We did not deal with the university constituencies because of the existence of an extant Bill published by the Government and it would have amounted to interference in the work of the Houses for us do so. Therefore, I will not respond to questions on that issue, except on the right to vote, to which I will come back shortly. It is not our objective, intention or thought to depoliticise the House either. That is the furthest thing from our minds because this is a political House. We do not understand the criticism from a number of quarters that in some way, if our proposals were to be implemented, there would be no political groupings in the House. We do not know how this came about, but it is just not true.

On the question of there being a Whip or strong party political input, we are agnostic. However, I remind the House that in the Bunreacht, tá sé thar a bheith soiléir, it is written clearly, "The House shall organise its own business". It is not our business to deal with the question of a Whip.

On the question of whether the university panels will be extended, that is a matter included in the Government's Bill, the heads of which have been published. We had sight of them, as did Members, but we have not dealt with that issue. In terms of overseas voters, including in Northern Ireland, the crucial issue is that this is a decision in principle. Many have raised the question as to whether we would be overwhelmed in finding we had 2 million voters outside of the country and only 500,000 in Ireland. First, as was mentioned by several speakers, the current Government proposal regarding the universities would see almost 750,000 voters on the panels, spread across the globe. Therefore, there is nothing new in our proposals that is not already on the radar of the Government. The issue of numbers is a matter for the House. We propose that there be votes for the diaspora, but how should we deal with the question of being overwhelmed? We could do a number of things. We could restrict the overseas votes to a particular panel. We chose not to do this, but the House could. Therefore, even if 20 million were to vote, they could only elect the number of Members from that panel.

Another way to do it would be to restrict votes to Irish passport holders. There are approximately 60,000 Irish passports issued per yearabroad, which means that in a ten-year period there are far less than 1 million potential voters. We could also insist on votes only being given to people who were born in Ireland. That information is included in the passport documentation. Votes could also be restricted to a number of years, for example, the number of years out of Ireland. There are many structures that could be put in place to deal with the issue and we have looked at all of the different ways that could be used. The decision in principle is what is important, but how it is implemented is a matter for the House. It is a decision that can only be made in legislation. It is important to understand this and that it can be changed at any time.

The position is similar in extending the vote to people living in Northern Ireland. It would simply be an extension of the Good Friday Agreement, which states that, by the principle of consent, people should be able to involve themselves in elections or express their citizenship as Irish, British or both. This comes from the clear intention outlined in the agreement.

A number of Senators raised the matter of taxation. Our thinking on this issue is that because this House does not determine taxation matters and has a restricted role in the area of finance and money, this offered a way in for the diaspora. Again, the House will have its own way of approaching the issue should it become a matter for discussion.

On the register of electors, we are positive that the register we have proposed would be more reliable than the current register for local, Dáil, European and university panel elections. We agree that the register should be capable of being checked on line and that this should be easily done.

The question was raised as to how one could communicate with a global electorate. This could be done by the simple pressing of a button and sending a communication to the 2 million people registered abroad. This would be a lot easier, cheaper and more effective way than anything currently in place.

Senators Cáit Keane and Feargal Quinn asked about votes by mail. The Constitution provides for a "secret postal ballot" or "le rúnbhallóid phoist". We received advice on this issue from a number of counsel who were unanimous that votes would have to be returned by post. We raised the point raised by Senator Feargal Quinn, that times had changed and that we had interpreted words in legislation to mean other things in order to deal with IT issues. This issue concerns the Constitution and our advice is that it cannot be done here.

Senator Cáit Keane raised the questions of electoral reform, the electoral commission and political reform. Many asked whether our report was putting the cart before the horse, whether we should do it in a different order or whether we should concentrate on total political reform. There are three documents on electoral commissions that are of significance: the Geary Institute-UCD paper published in 2008; the all-party Oireachtas report published in 2010, and the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government document published in January 2015. I recommend that Senators read these reports. Starting with the last report, they will find little or no reference to the Seanad in the document which is being dealt with by joint committee. It states there should be consultation with the Clerk of the Dáil. The only reference to the Clerk of the Seanad is in a passing reference to returning officers. Senators should be clear on this point. Also, the document of January 2015 states the establishment of a commission should be considered on a phased basis. What we propose would work into that timescale and system. I ask Senators to look carefully at it.

Senator Ivana Bacik raised a number of questions about Article 19 and whether indirect elections, the election of councillors, could be confined to panels. We spent significant time discussing this issue. We looked at Article 19, which has never been used, and thought it offered a solution. It allows for another proposal. It states: "Provision may be made by law for the direct election by any functional or vocational group or association or council...". We thought the words in the article would include councillors and local authorities, but the advice we received from three counsel was that it would not. They all said it would restrict it to one group and that it could not be used for different ones. We then looked at the suggestion made by Senator Ivana Bacik, that we could include all of them in one panel, the Administrative Panel, for example. If we were to do this, all of the other groups included in the Administrative Panel, which in the main deal with disability issues, would not have access. We cannot transfer nominators to different panels. We worked our way backwards and came up with a somewhat convoluted system, but we were stuck with a Constitution which provided for two or three on a sub-panel of each panel. Our solution, however, is not ideal.In response to the question from Senators Maurice Cummins and Ivana Bacik on the possibility of a skewed electorate, with people opting to be included in one panel and nobody choosing to be included in another, that could happen. We have dealt with the issue whereby the format of the indirect panel could also be used for the general panel. It may be the case that it might be decided to restrict the number who may opt for a particular panel by setting a minimum or maximum number of candidates, similar to the numbers set in the Constitution for elections to the Dáil. The Senators have asked a valid question, but we deliberately left it open. There are many ways to deal with it, but we decided not to deal with it at this time. One way of dealing with it would be by working registrations through the nominating bodies which would certainly ensure it was not skewed. One could have more candidates on a specific panel. Some of the nominating bodies may have small numbers to deal with, but that would not be a problem.

Senator Paschal Mooney raised the question of knowledge and experience and spoke about the need for a High Court judge in this regard. Let me reassure the House that we went through every High Court judgment line by line where there was a problem. We also had a long discussion with the Clerk of the Seanad about this. The problem is that there are no criteria for assessing knowledge and experience, on which a High Court judge has to adjudicate, and what one person may decide is sufficient, another may decide otherwise. Senator Gerard P. Craughwell correctly said the nominating bodies determined what qualifications their candidates should have. That is what we have inferred in our report, but the nominating bodies would have to put in place a system that would be clearly understood. The Clerk of the Seanad, as returning officer, would have to decide whether a candidate had an adequate level of knowledge and-or practical experience and it would come down to a subjective judgment. We propose that there be criteria to make the position clear. That is all we are saying. People say if it is not broken, do not fix it. We work on the basis that if it is not broken, it will shortly become obsolete such that we should be changing it.

A number of Senators raised the question of whether there should be more indirectly elected Members. When one does the sums, one has very little room for movement. If one decides that the majority of Members should be elected by popular vote, one is suddenly over 30, not including the six university seats and the Taoiseach's 11 nominees.

Another question was whether Seanad and European elections should be held at the same time. We cannot do this because Bunreacht na hÉireann is very clear that the elections to the Seanad have to take place within 90 days of Dáil elections. One cannot relate it to European elections as suggested.

Senator David Cullinane asked about people from the North being elected to the Seanad. That is not a problem. Quite a number of the nominating bodies are all-Ireland bodies and can nominate anybody they like, North or South. It is their call. There is nothing in the Constitution to prevent this from happening.

I think I have dealt in general terms with all of the specific questions raised, but on the general question of political reform and the electoral commission, we have worked within the scope and context of the current position. The issue is complex. The Government's proposal is to set up an electoral commission and people were afraid that it would decide to do it altogether. They talk about an election commission as if there is a general understanding of what it means. There are no two countries with the same kind of electoral commission. One of the three documents I mentioned states there should be no former politicians on an electoral commission, while another states there should. We are discussing the third document. This is an issue that has to be decided. In some countries the electoral commission is utterly independent of the government, while in others it is appointed by the government and works separately, or it may be a mix of the two, but there is no model that is understood globally. It will be whatever suits the Government of the day.

We looked at the idea of giving everybody a vote on every panel, but we thought that would be too cumbersome. We decided on the principle of one person, one vote. That means an individual who is a councillor, a graduate and a citizen will not have three votes. As a councillor, a person will have to vote in the indirect election. That is written into our document. As a graduate, a person may decide to de-register and re-register on one of the other panels orvice versa.

I think I have dealt with gach ceann de na ceisteanna atá curtha chugam ag an bpointe seo. If I have forgotten anything or if there are other issues, we will be happy to respond to questions. If further clarification is required, we will be very happy to deal with queries. Members can drop us a note or raise queries through the Leader, with whom we will be in contact regularly.

In many ways, this is an historic day. Even though this is the 12th or 13th report - I cannot remember which - it is the first time a Taoiseach has come out and said to us that he will set up a body to implement it. The question was raised fairly by Senator Feargal Quinn and others as to the cause of the delay until now, but it is not one for us. I completely agree with the point raised by Senator Katherine Zappone. We have written legislation and legislation has been brought forward previously by Senators John Crown, Feargal Quinn and Katherine Zappone. We have asked that the implementation body have access to the Parliamentary Counsel. It could be done within time. The Government has made the decision to have the report implemented in time before the following general election.