David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

-----and I want to see house painters involved in the process. I want to see them voting, but I want to see them voting under the appropriate category, not universities.

With regard to the electors, a third of the electorate will be people outside Ireland. I have always felt there should be some element of representation, but a third of the electorate is a hell of a lot of people - nearly 2 million people. What happened to the old idea of no representation without taxation? One third of the voters will be people who do not pay any tax in this country. That is something I would hesitate over.

How will the register for people in the North of Ireland be put together? The Bill states that the register shall contain various things such as a person's e-mail address. What about the Data Protection Act? I think the Data Protection Act is a curse. One comes across it all the time. I do not know how they will get over that. There is also a situation where people can chop and change and they will go into the ones where there is the least number of constituents so we could have a distortion there. There is also the electronic form. What happened to the peann luaidhe? I am rather a fan of the peann luaidhe.

In the section on application for entry in the register, there is a huge amount of bureaucracy which I will not go into at this stage. There is the unutterable meanness of saying that people cannot stand in the university seats if they have an honorary degree. Why the hell not? An honorary degree is normally a huge honour. Of course it should entitle them to be considered as a graduate and then I see that for the first election they will maintain the original register for the universities. Well hello - I wish them joy in concocting the next one.

In choosing the nominating bodies, nothing whatever is said about revising them. It is really important to bring the nominating bodies into the 21st century and to get them to nominate people. For example, the RDS was approached by several candidates but it refused to nominate anybody. In my opinion that is a dereliction of duty so the nominating bodies need to be looked at. Then we have the provision whereby if one is a Member of the Seanad already one does not have to qualify. Come on - that is a real stinker. That is a rotten exemption.

With regard to the nominations for the university seats, one can nominate oneself. Nowadays one has to have a nominator and a seconder and one cannot nominate oneself. There has to be eight centres, bringing the number of centres to 40 which is far too many and one has to make a deposit of €900. I can afford that amount but what about other people. We heard Senator Ruane speak about how she got into the university as an undergraduate. If people like Senator Ruane could afford the €900 there are many other people who would be disenfranchised by this cost. I am against that - it is free at the moment and should remain free.

The issuing of ballots is only in electronic form. I have never used a computer in my entire life and I hope and expect to go to my grave a computer virgin. What will happen to me? Will I not be allowed a vote because I dislike computers? They will find there are plenty of auld farmers around the joint who do not have computers so why should they be excluded? There should be one ballot paper for the constituency. My God almighty, that is a cracker. There will be one ballot paper for this monstrous constituency. In the last election there were 30 candidates for NUI and 17 for Trinity, that is 47 candidates. Under this Bill there will be about 150 candidates. I doubt if people will bother their backsides to vote for 150 candidates. Then there is the qualifications. That they have to be listed in alphabetical order is a form of discrimination. That gives automatic advantage to people who are at the top of the alphabet. Why not go the whole hog and make it a random selection at every election?