Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after “That” and substitute the following: - “the Bill be read a second time on 30th June, 2023, to allow for further consideration of the Bill.”

I welcome the Minister of State to the House again. I am delighted to see him here to discuss this important legislation. This is an initiative I wholly support. It goes to a subject close to my heart, as someone who has fought far more elections than is good for anybody’s health. I have also dealt with far too many posters over my lifetime. I would love to see the banning of posters and I have advocated for this for a long time. When I advocated this measure when I was a member of Dublin City Council, I was accused of trying to push down other candidates because I was from a big party and I was a big candidate. I understand, however, the narrative behind that attitude.

I do not propose this amendment to be obstructive or to seek in any way to prevaricate on this issue. This matter is part of a much wider issue when we talk about our democracy and consider our electoral process. This is an issue on which the Minister and Minister of State have taken significant action and I commend them on that. I refer to the Electoral Reform Bill 2022 introduced earlier this year. We are long overdue electoral reform. We have a strong and old democracy and one we can be proud of. It is not without its weaknesses, however, and there is room for improvement. The Bill brought forward, on which I and my colleagues on the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage have done pre-legislative scrutiny, has great potential to strengthen our democracy through the establishment of a permanent statutory independent electoral commission.

That electoral commission will strengthen our democracy by bolstering our election process not only for local and presidential elections, but for all elections. It is especially important that we deal with the issue of posters. To a certain extent, posters are an obvious and public manifestation of some parties' clout and their deep pockets and armies of operatives that enable them to put up not just thousands, but tens of thousands of posters overnight and subsequently remove them. Other candidates' posters can also be quite mysteriously removed, only for them to reappear after the deadline for taking down posters has passed, with the result that the poor candidate gets fined.

Getting back to the issue at hand, not only does the electoral commission proposed under the Electoral Reform Bill 2022 have the potential to deal with the not-so-nice elements of postering, but it also has the potential to deal with the electoral register and the registration of voters.Dealing with this issue is long overdue. The register is far from fit for purpose. It is far too easy to exploit and abuse it. There are polling stations where people who have been dead and buried for many years vote. I say with no disrespect to those who have gone before that they really should not have a say in modern-day elections. Those who abuse people who are deceased by using their polling cards to vote fraudulently attack our democracy. There is also the operation of the polling stations themselves with regard to checking voters' identity. The almost overwhelming support for some candidates in some polling boxes is spectacularly uniform. This is an important issue.

The funding of political parties is a very murky business. Some political parties and elected representatives are incredibly transparent and raise funds through €10 or €20 tickets and table quizzes. They are fully compliant with our standards in public office which is very important. It is not a level playing field and we all know this. The electoral commission has a job to do on this.

We speak about posters and how they can dominate but in some respects they are easier to police than social media, the use of technology and modern communications. They are a lot more transparent. People can see the thousands of posters that are up but social media is on our phones. It is not just Meta, Facebook and Instagram, although they openly tell us they have no interest in the truth, have no role to play and abdicate all responsibility when it comes to asserting, enforcing or encouraging standards of honest communication on their platforms. There are also all of the other communication apps, such as WhatsApp, and fake community groups and fake chat groups that are hijacked and infiltrated and used to promote insidious false narratives and discussions.

I commend Senator O'Reilly on this initiative. I support it. The reason I support a delay in the next reading of the Bill is because we cannot deal with this issue in isolation. We must have an holistic approach to our electoral process. We must look at all of its weaknesses and address all of them. I ask the Minister of State to deal with this urgently. The next local elections will be soon upon us. Every candidate deserves an equal playing field. All those who put themselves forward as candidates in an election deserve to know they are contesting the election on a level playing field. They deserve to know the State operates elections in a way that protects, champions and delivers democracy.