Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will stick to the amendment, but I might take the liberty to add one thing at the end. To respond to the Minister regarding his response concerning the Electoral Commission, and I do not want to get into the Supreme Court's judgment last week, what we do know and can take away from it, because I was there and listened to the seven Supreme Court judges, including Ms Justice Marie Baker, who is the chair of the Electoral Commission, is that the Supreme Court judgment stands. It was just suspended. The decision has been made. This man has won his case and the Minister accepts this. I know he does because he mentioned it. It is only a question of time now. The clock is now ticking to 31 July. I was there and heard the Attorney General spell out, to some extent, what he was doing. Given the constraints of Cabinet confidentiality, he clearly could not share all that information, even with the court, and he made this point clear.

There is a strong case to have the entire Seanad electoral process managed by the Electoral Commission. Why not? We must have the same system in this regard across the board. This is not to pass any remarks on anyone operating the system now. This is an important proposal. Regarding vesting the central registration of the university electoral registers in the Electoral Commission, this amendment is a strong and good one. We have an expert and a capable person with vast experience leading this off. This is important and I support it.

I will finish by asking people to remember that this Bill stipulates that a candidate in the university constituency must be a graduate. This provision does not exist now, so I will not be supporting this Bill. This is a crazy Bill. This process is not about excluding but including people. The proposal from Senator Malcolm Byrne of Fianna Fáil, though, is to exclude people who are not graduates. People who are not graduates will not be able to stand for that constituency.