Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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International election monitoring missions play an important role in the promotion of democracy and human rights. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade maintains and administers a roster of individuals to participate in election observation missions, organised in the main by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union (EU). I refer the Deputy to the responses to previous Parliamentary Questions on this matter, Question 167 of 4 July 2018, Questions 167 and 172 of 25 October 2017 Questions 357 and 358 of 13 December 2016, Question 243 of 2 November 2016 and Questions 335, 336 and 337 of 14 June 2016.

The criteria for selection for observation missions were set out in the Information Note for Applicants accompanying the call for applications to join the Election Observation Roster established in 2013. This is unchanged, both in selection criteria and methodology.

For each election observation mission to which Ireland proposes to deploy observers, all roster members are invited to express their interest in the mission with a view to ensuring the widest possible participation. A short-list is drawn up based on the specific criteria set out by the EU or OSCE, including relevant local and regional experience, language proficiency, gender and length of time since serving on a mission. In many cases, the EU and OSCE also invite Member States to nominate new observers or observers with limited experience. However, the final decision rests with the inviting body, usually the OSCE or the European Union.

The recent call for Election Observers to participate in the upcoming EU EOM to Zimbabwe attracted a high volume of applications with a total of twenty four Short-Term and eight Long-Term Observer applications. Four Long-Term Observers (LTOs) and four Short-Term Observers (STOs) were nominated from which the EU EOM selected two LTOs, one LTO reserves and two STOs, reflecting the highly competitive nature of selection.

Roster members are individually notified of the outcome of the selection and in the case of EU Missions, the EU made the actual final selection. There are important concerns about the release of personal data in terms of legislation and security to third parties. Circulating such information about individual observers would require the consent of observers and doing so without their consent may be in breach of EU General Data Protection Regulation.