Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise a couple of items relating to the census. I heard Senator Malcolm Byrne refer to people who would obstruct the work of the census or make life difficult for census enumerators as "muppets". I certainly have no sympathy with any such obstructive tactics by people, but it is important to say that part of the democratic contract between us and which binds us to the State is that in return for our compliance we can expect fairness, accuracy, transparency, accountability and adherence to high standards.

Turning to the question of the assignation of sex, the Central Statistics Office website states that if people are uncomfortable ticking one of the options of "male" or "female", they can mark both boxes and, for analytical purposes, then a sex will be assigned at random. Bearing in mind that, normally, supplying false information is subject to a very serious fine, the website is telling people that if they are uncomfortable with this or that aspect of the process they may do something that otherwise would come under the heading of false information.

Regardless of what one thinks about the debate about so-called transgender rights, and that is a term that can mean different things to different people, it cannot be right that people would be asked to supply false information if they are uncomfortable about answering correctly. If I feel uncomfortable about answering some other section of the census, am I entitled to answer it incorrectly? Less an example of sloppiness, it is a decline in the standard of accountability, fairness, accuracy and respect for process that we see in different areas in these times.

I have had extreme difficulty getting the Minister for Health and the Department of Health to answer a basic question. As an elected representative, when I write a letter to the Minister for Health or to Ms Geraldine Luddy in the Department of Health and the people involved in the three-year review of abortion, as I have done, asking about whether people can supply information in a free-form manner other than the prescribed template and whether their issue will be considered, and when I do not even get an answer to the letter and the policy of the Minister for Health is just to ignore anything coming from pro-life people as though they do not matter, what one is seeing is a decline or a small bit of death for democracy. Everybody should matter equally in this State, and when people's elected representatives ask questions they deserve to get answers. I have seen very bad standards from the Department of Health in recent times and I do not believe it is a forced linkage to say that what we are seeing with the census is an example of the same type of sloppiness.

The census form is considered to be a notice for the purpose of the Act, and the sections require that the notice must specify a date by which the information in the form has to be returned. It has been pointed out to me that the census form does not actually specify this date. The form refers multiple times to census night but, bizarrely, does not specify a date. What is going on here? On a strict and extreme reading of the Statistics Act, that could potentially invalidate the entire census. Is this more sloppiness coming from the system?

Finally, there are the complaints from Irish speakers which tend to arise during every census. Irish speakers do not feel they are being given an opportunity either to answer the census in Irish or to converse with enumerators in Irish. That is something that must be addressed.