John O'Mahony (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

An issue relating to the Citizens' Assembly has been covered in the media today. It has been announced that there was an issue with people who voted on 13 and 14 January and the how they were selected. They were the personal contacts of a recruiter. Obviously everybody would agree that the Citizens' Assembly has done a useful job in the past couple of years since it was appointed. However, this undermines its credibility and raises concerns about the constitution or make-up of the assembly. I note the response of Ms Justice Mary Laffoy and that of the RED C marketing company. It is not good enough that this should have happened at all.

Having looked up some details on it, I note that 53 members have been replaced since it was set up in 2016. We need know if this happened previously, possibly on numerous occasions. The Citizens' Assembly made serious recommendations in various areas. We want to know if it was authentic. It was raised here before that five counties were not represented at all. That could happen and it is not necessarily a criticism of it. When it was announced, we were told it would be scientifically made up through people knocking on doors and getting across all the demography of all the different ages and other groups. This is undermining. If the Citizens' Assembly is to continue and get its credibility back, we need to be reassured about how it is made up and how replacements are recruited.