Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. When we speak about people engaging with an online system, Estonia has one of the highest levels in Europe of citizen engagement with the state using online platforms. Ireland is quite a good deal lower down the list. There seem to be many documents that are produced by the Minister's Department that are unavailable on the website. It was most frustrating recently when the mayoral issue for Cork and Dublin was in the news. A previous Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy John Gormley, had produced a Green Paper on the issue, which is unavailable, as are many other documents on that website. I do not believe this is good for transparency.

We can only achieve a thriving democracy when all of our society has a stake in that process. The activism and involvement of young people in the referendum for civil marriage equality and the referendum to repeal the eighth amendment is evidence that, when engaged, young people demonstrate an interest in mobilising and participating in the political process. This is despite the obstacles that exist, including a lack of formal education. I have, however, heard very good reports about the politics module from those who are on the pilot programme. There are also issues around promotion and difficulties in registering to vote.

The processes by which people register to vote and where active citizenship is promoted has not changed in decades now. Calls for changes in how our institutions engage with younger people and first-time voters, including my own proposals, have always been batted away - this happened especially around the time of the repeal referendum - with promises and commitments on the establishment of an electoral commission. It is very welcome that the heads of the electoral commission Bill are being prepared and that considerable work is being done on that front. It has also become apparent, through the work of the Seanad reform implementation group, that the Department does not have enough resources. We are now dealing with the next presidential election and the next referendums. More resources are needed for the Department and for the staff working in the area of reform.

The establishment of an electoral commission was first raised in the Oireachtas in 2004 and has been in programmes for Government since 2007. With regard to the functions it could have, online voter registration facilities could be part of that. It is a glaring omission from our registration process. Galway County Council has online voter registration but it is up to individual local authorities. There appears to be a lack of instruction or guidelines from the Department in this regard. Voter registration by paper hard copy is no longer the norm. It is an exception around the world now. According to some responses we have received to parliamentary questions, there are no legislative barriers to bringing the process online. As I have said, local authorities such as Galway County Council have rolled out their own process. Registration windows could be on a one-month rolling basis and the register could be centralised.

The role of the electoral commission could also be to collect data. For example, the CSO collected data on voter turnout during 2011. When we hear that young people do not vote, we should be conscious that in 2011 the overall turnout was 69.9% and the turnout among 18 to 25 year olds was 62%. It is not entirely true to say that younger people do not vote. There are no such data on the recent referendums on marriage equality and the eighth amendment but I suspect that the younger voter turnout was much higher than the 62% from 2011.

We need to target those areas of our society where there are minorities such as prisoners and people from working-class communities where voter turnout is lower. That is our responsibility. I accept that people are distracted by the struggles of their everyday lives. That should be taken into account. It is not just about confidence in politicians. We need to target the demographics.

I welcome that legislation is forthcoming. It is important that we remember Ireland is 137th in the world for voter registration processes. We need to be very ambitious about rectifying that and I look forward to engaging with the Minister of State in the future.