Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his words and my thanks to everybody who has engaged in this debate.

I welcome that the Minister of State will encourage the commission to look at this Bill as part of its work because significant work has been put into it. I have heard many of the arguments that have been made here. My one comment is that when it comes to the place of posters in the democratic process, perhaps that is part of the problem. What type of democracy do we want? Do we want democracy which is based on people’s faces, with nothing else behind which person is most popular, who has the most money, who gets their face out there the most, and is the one who is elected? That is what we have.

Does this affect the quality of our democracy? It does affect the quality of our democracy. That is why it is key to look at designated areas where people are forced to say what it is they stand for. I would disagree with Senator Moynihan to the extent that I do not think democracy at the moment is fun. It is very boring when I go through the streets and I just see face after face. I could not say what those people stand for. I am fairly new to politics and came to it fairly late in life and I would not have had a clue when going in to vote. I always voted but I never knew what any of the candidates stood for. I was doing other things in my community which were valuable and more important to me. I voted based on party and always voted Green but there are many people who want to know what that is and what the manifesto behind that is. I would not have known who to vote for as a number two and number three preference. This is not aiding us.

I have used posters and I return to the points made by Senators McGahon and Ward, who both mentioned Tidy Towns. There are 152 areas in Ireland that prohibited posters in 2019. That is happening, with or without us. It greatly impacts on the people who are running for election in those areas. This is one's local area, it is stopping one from putting up posters and yet one is a first-time candidate. Do we think that that does not have an impact? It does. We cannot stop that, nor should we, because that is what the people want. We have to find some way of regulating it that puts everybody on a level playing field because it is not fair, in any event.

If one is a newcomer, one absolutely, 100%, has to use posters. I am glad that the Minister of State has admitted how difficult it was because there would have been some members of the Green Party would have said that here is Malcolm Noonan not putting up posters and putting us all under pressure. It is very difficult to get over the line as a first-time candidate.

I argue that if the incumbents and newcomers had to drop all of their posters, it would bring a level playing field closer. It does not close the gap but incumbents already have a significant advantage on newcomers because they are putting up the posters and they are known. As a newcomer when putting up posters, one becomes known in a small way. This would encourage all of us to become a great deal more creative if we took a step back and said that this is not what elections or politics are about. Politics is actually about representing people properly. I go back to the statistics that I raised earlier which state that the majority of people do not want posters and do not notice what is behind that poster. We are not, in fact, doing a service. Of course, the people inside this Chamber love posters and the razzmatazz because they love elections but the majority of people out there are not similarly engaged.

I have come from other elections in other countries where they have posters. I was in Hungary for the recent election there, doing election observation, and there were posters. I was in an area of a city in Hungary comprised entirely of the Romany community and the turnout was very low. We waited there for 40 minutes and only one person came in to vote in that period of time. Posters were up but they were not engaging people or reaching out across the divide and closing that social barrier. It was doing none of that. A great deal more has to happen in order for us to close that divide.

That is why the electoral commission is critical and is a critical part of what happens in government. I do not want that this important issue in respect of the environment is also forgotten about and that we somehow say that this is the essential thing in promoting democracy, which is that we just throw up posters everywhere. No, it is not. The two things need to happen together and we need to take our responsibility as climate leaders seriously now. We have a responsibility. Yes, it was the Green Party in previous elections that went to the doors and we were kicked as to why we had posters up. Our reply was that it was because Sinn Féin, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have them up so I will otherwise stand no chance. All parties are going to be asked those questions as to why they are putting up posters in the coming years because people care about the environment and are sick of it. They do not think this is representing their views properly. I thank the Acting Chairman.