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Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 31 May 2022

Vol. 1023 No. 1

Electoral Reform Bill 2022: Instruction to Committee

I move:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 187, it be an instruction to the Dáil in Committee on the Electoral Reform Bill 2022, that it has power to make amendments to the Bill which are outside the scope of the existing provisions of the Bill, in relation to amendments to:

(a) sections 2, 3, 22, 23A, 25, 43, 46, 48A, 61, 83, 84, 85, 86 and 88 of the Electoral Act 1997 and the insertion of new sections 4B, 24B, 91 and 92 into the Electoral Act 1997 for the purposes of providing powers of investigation to the Standards in Public Office Commission, enhancing transparency in relation to certain donations to political parties and to provide, inter alia, for the preparation by political parties of consolidated annual statements of accounts; and

(b) sections 85, 86, 96, 108 and 114 of the Electoral Act 1992; sections 3, 7 and 42 of the Presidential Elections Act 1993; sections 2, 13 and 30 of the Referendum Act 1994; articles 49, 50 and 76 of the Local Elections Regulations 1995; sections 26 of the Local Government Act 2001; sections 10, and rules 48, 49 and 75 of the Second Schedule of the European Parliament Elections Act 1997 for the purposes of providing for same day voting on islands at elections and referendums.

I am sharing time with Deputy McAuliffe. The purpose of this motion is to instruct the Dáil in committee, pursuant to Standing Order 187, that it has power to make amendments to the Electoral Reform Bill 2022 outside the scope of the existing provisions of the Bill. In this regard, I propose to introduce amendments to the Bill on Committee Stage, to be held in Dáil Éireann later this afternoon. The Committee Stage amendments to the Bill in the motion are twofold and comprise amendments to the Electoral Act 1997, and amendments to the provision for island voting in the Electoral Act 1992, the Presidential Elections Act 1993, the Referendum Act 1994, the Local Elections Regulations 1995, the Local Government Act 2001 and the European Parliament Elections Act 1997.

I will now set out the amendments to the scope of the Electoral Reform Bill 2022 relating to the Electoral Act 1997, or Part 6 of the amended Bill. As the House will be aware, Programme for Government - Our Shared Future commits the Government to reviewing “our current electoral laws and the conduct of politics in Ireland, to ensure that donations and resources from non-citizens outside the State are not being utilised to influence our elections and political process.” It goes on to state we will legislate to prevent this if necessary.

In late January 2021, the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, and I wrote to all 25 political parties on the register of political parties seeking their views on the regulation of electoral funding from outside the jurisdiction of the State and on other related matters in the context of the Government commitment.

The amendments I intend to move on Committee Stage of the Electoral Reform Bill 2022 arise as a result of that consultation process and were informed by further engagement between my Department and Government parties. In summary, the proposed amendments will: strengthen the definition of "subsidiary organisation" to clarify that it includes a body or association which maintains an office outside the State; amend the definition of "donation" to confirm that it includes any donation from a subsidiary organisation located outside the State; update the definition of "institution" in the light of changes in the financial services sector and to include credit unions within its meaning, which will allow political donations accounts to be opened within credit union institutions for the first time; prohibit the acceptance of donations of any value in the form of a cryptocurrency; impose a new obligation on the leaders of political parties to provide a written statement and an accompanying statutory declaration in respect of each year to the Standards in Public Office Commission, SIPO, stating that all donations from outside of the State, whether in cash or in kind, have been declared and that no other donations, either in cash or in kind, took place; insert new requirements into the Act to confirm that the preparation of the annual statements of accounts must be in accordance with guidelines published by SIPO and with the relevant requirements of the FRS 102 financial reporting standard and the inclusion of all property in the ownership or control of the political party and its subsidiary organisations when the annual statements of accounts are being prepared; and provide a wide range of investigatory powers to SIPO, as the body currently responsible for regulatory oversight under the Act.

These provisions are modelled on similar powers in the Regulation of Lobbying Act 2015. The proposed amendments are designed to strengthen and enhance the transparency measures already in place around the funding of our political system and will further protect our democracy against malign foreign influence at a time of unprecedented global threats.

The second set of amendments to the Electoral Reform Bill 2022 included in this motion will amend the Electoral Act 1992, the Presidential Elections Act 1993, the Referendum Act 1994, the Local Elections Regulations 1995, the Local Government Act 2001 and the European Parliament Elections Act 1997 to provide for same-day island voting at all elections and referendums in Ireland. These amendments will ensure polling at elections and referendums on the islands will take place on the same day as the rest of the country. The amendments would be inserted into the Bill by way of a new Part 7 and an amendment to section 3 of the Bill, and will amend the Electoral Acts mentioned as follows. The amendments will remove the existing provisions in the Electoral Acts that currently allow returning officers to take the poll on islands at elections and referendums up to five days before the appointed polling day where, in the opinion of the returning officer, it would be impracticable due to stress of weather or transport difficulties to either take the poll on the appointed polling day or to deliver the ballot boxes to the count centre by 9 a.m. the following day, if the poll were to go ahead on polling day.

The amendments to the Bill will also insert new provisions into all electoral codes to allow the Minister the power to make an order to shorten polling hours on an island at an election or referendum where it would be unnecessary or impracticable to have full polling hours due to local circumstances and taking account of the advice of the returning officer. Such an order must be made no later than seven days before polling day and the amended polling period must not be less than four hours. The returning officer would be required to give public notice in the polling district of the times and date of the poll. The local circumstances to be considered include the size of the electorate on the island, distance between a polling station on an island and the count centre, advance weather forecasts or foreseen transport difficulties. Accordingly, the amendments to the Bill will amend the existing provisions in the Electoral Acts, which currently allow for polling hours on islands to be reduced on polling day itself where weather or transport difficulties affect the commencement of the poll or the timely delivery of ballot boxes to the count centre, in order to clarify that these are emergency provisions to be used only in the event of unforeseen weather or transport difficulties on polling day itself. The amendments to the Bill will amend the preliminary procedures for the counting of votes in the Electoral Acts to allow returning officers, in the event of weather or transport difficulties at an election or referendum that would give rise to the late arrival of ballot boxes from a polling station on an island, to proceed with the opening of ballot boxes and the verification of ballot paper accounts for each box that have been received. These tasks typically take a number of hours to complete and the proposed amendments would allow these tasks to be commenced pending the late arrival of ballot boxes from a polling station on an island.

I look forward to the debate on the motion.

I thank the Minister of State for allocating to me the remaining part of his time. It is unfortunate that in a debate that will last an hour, there are 50 minutes for opposition statements and seven and a half minutes for the 82 Members on the Government side. If we are talking about electoral reform, perhaps the Business Committee might start with those disproportionate arrangements.

Both the Chairman of the relevant committee and I are anxious to put on record the extensive pre-legislative scrutiny process that took place last year. I think there were seven specific meetings with some held during the depths of Covid and the restrictions. I thank all the members for contributing to that. This week we will hold 12 hours of committee hearings and every Member of the House is welcome to come. There will be many amendments. It is important we debate this because it affects every Member in this House and everyone who will be a Member of the Houses.

There is one area of concern that has not been addressed. I welcome in particular the same-day island voting. Deputy Ó Cuív has worked hard on that and I welcome that progress.

There is the issue of transparency in regard to donations which we will address later. The issue of online political advertising remains regulated, but I regard it as facilitated. I refer to the ban on broadcast media - radio and television. Why are we allowing authoritative news sources to be deprived of revenue activity while permitting online political advertisers to benefit from it? They do not regard themselves as publishers but they will benefit from that advertising. We should ban online political advertising until we have properly regulated this space and until we treat all media outlets equally.

I thank the Minister of State for his explanation. On the Bill itself, this legislation is of enormous importance. Repeatedly during our discussions both as part of pre-legislative scrutiny and on Second Stage, it was described as a once-in-a-generation Bill. I echo Deputy McAuliffe's description of the pre-legislative scrutiny. It was probably the most detailed done in this Oireachtas and a very significant amount of time was taken by members and witnesses. It was also one of the most collegiate and cross-party pre-legislative scrutiny processes we have had. There was broad agreement among members, irrespective of party, on the need for the most modern, well-resourced and independent electoral commission, electoral register and subsequent processes to ensure our electoral processes into the future are free, fair, democratic and of the highest possible integrity.

In fairness to the Minister, he indicated early on there was an intention to bring a range of non-consequential amendments and he wrote to members of the committee outlining the general areas in which he intended to do that. I thank the Department and its officials for organising a detailed briefing yesterday that a number of us attended. It was helpful because, even with the best will in the world, some of these amendments are very technical and it is much better to have had that briefing before we go to Committee Stage.

Sinn Féin warmly welcomes both sets of non-consequential amendments. During the last Dáil, Deputy Ó Cuív had a Private Members' motion on modernising the voting arrangements on the islands passed and we supported that. My colleagues, in particular Deputies Doherty and Mac Lochlainn, were very vocal on it in the last Oireachtas and previously and we are very happy to support those amendments.

With respect to the amendments dealing with the Electoral Act 1997, anything that increases the transparency, accountability and visibility is warmly welcomed. We have no difficulty with the amendments whatsoever and will be supporting them later on.

It is important to echo what Deputy McAuliffe said. The Chair of the committee and the committee itself have made it clear there is no guillotine and we will take as much time as we need to go through these amendments. Members may have technical questions on the consequential or, indeed, the non-consequential amendments. There will be plenty of time for debate around that. We will return here for Report and Final Stages before the Bill goes to the Seanad.

I have a final point, and again it is in the spirit of collegiality we had during the pre-legislative scrutiny. Deputy McAuliffe made a fair point on the speaking time. If he had spoken to me beforehand, I would have happily given him a few minutes of my time if he needed it. We need to return to the issue of the regulation of online social media platforms and advertising on those platforms and our electoral processes. There was a very strong sense from all members of the committee - opposition and government members - that while the provisions in the Bill are welcome, they are weak. It is incumbent on us, once this Bill is passed, to return and have a wider conversation about that.

I believe there is an appetite in the committee to ensure that the same principles and values that underpin the strong restrictions on buying advertising in mainstream media should apply to social media as well. We are very fortunate that we do not have the type of malign influence that certain forms of financial investment have in other liberal democracies around the world, and we should ensure those same principles apply to media. I assure Deputy McAuliffe he has friends on this side of the House if he wants to pursue that.

However, we must get this Bill through and get the electoral commission established. It has to be an electoral commission of strength and substance, with adequate resourcing and with the power to conduct the crucial pieces of research that the Government was not willing to include in this Bill, so it can recommend further reform into the future. I look forward to the committee's debate today, tomorrow and Friday and, indeed, next week, if that is deemed necessary by the members.

I agree with what Deputies Ó Broin and McAuliffe said. The pace of change in the evolution of online platforms is such that we will not be in a position to wait two, three, five or ten years for a reappraisal of the utility and effectiveness of this legislation. It is an important start, but we have to remain ahead of the game and keep a watching brief on how the evolution of those platforms impacts on the way we do politics in this country, the way we campaign and the activities of citizens and others, especially those from outside the State, in that regard.

I welcome this debate, but I do not think it is a debate that we should have had to force, in essence. It became abundantly clear that the amendments tabled by the Minister of State for the select committee strayed well beyond the original intentions of the legislation as initiated and as debated on Second Stage a few weeks ago. For a long time my party, a party that is largely responsible for much of the ethical framework that now governs Irish politics and for the change introduced some years ago relating to corporate donations and so forth, has been campaigning and committed to updating and modernising the framework in respect of how we fairly finance politics in this country.

The rules we introduced about a decade ago succeeded in flushing big money corporate donations out of Irish politics to a real extent, but the bequest of cash and assets worth more than £2 million from the late William Hampton to the Sinn Féin Party and that party's acceptance of it exposed some of the frailties of our system and some of the anomalies that exist between both jurisdictions on this island. It appears that the Standards in Public Office Commission, SIPO, agrees. That was clearly outlined in correspondence it issued to the Labour Party in response to concerns we raised with it. It seems that a party that is registered and active in both jurisdictions can accept limitless amounts of cash in the North regardless of the restrictions here. I am not saying that as a criticism necessarily; I am saying it is a fact of life. That is the reality and it is incumbent on us as legislators and on anybody who wishes to see a more transparent system of politics and the financing of politics on this island to call that out and to propose solutions to what is a real problem. Frankly, I would not look to what I describe as the corrupt and amoral UK system of political financing to set a benchmark for the framework of ethics in politics in this jurisdiction.

The amendments from the Minister of State reflect some of the reforms that I proposed in my Second Stage contribution on this Bill. Little did I think that such extensive reforms would be proposed to be inserted into the legislation at this point, welcome as the amendments are in principle. The way in which the Bill has been wholesale amended with the intention of shunting it very hastily into the select committee, as we will do from this afternoon, is no way to do business. I hope the House will accept that. As I said on the Order of Business last week, these reforms are critical to the proper functioning of politics and of our democracy. The Dáil should have been given ample time to interrogate the proposals from the Minister of State properly. I accept we will do that on Committee Stage in the select committee and on Report Stage and that the process will be mirrored in the Seanad, but we should have been afforded the opportunity to have sight of the Minister of State's proposals on Second Stage.

We also did not have ample opportunity to propose amendments to the Minister of State's amendments. Two amendments have been circulated this afternoon. One of them is from me and one is from the Minister of State. That is an imperfect way of doing business late in the day. Quite frankly, it is unsatisfactory and it can lead to the making of bad law and to unintended consequences. Officials in the Department said at the very welcome briefing yesterday, which we all welcomed and found very useful, that many of the ideas reflected in the amendments came from the consultation that was undertaken with the political parties in 2021. That was an important consultation. However, if we are to accept that, surely we should accept that those changes should have been reflected in the initial Bill and not brought forward in such a hasty fashion.

In the short time I have left I will speak to some of the amendments. Bringing so-called subsidiary organisations into the ambit of the financing and donations sphere is very important, as is the requirement to declare all properties owned by political parties and subsidiary organisations and put them into the ambit of the system. We know that most wealth in this country is held not in cash but in assets, such as land and property. Where there are assets such as wealth in property there is wealth and that has to be recorded. We must be very clear about who owns those properties and assets. That is in the public interest. It is important, too, that annual statutory declarations will have to be made by party leaders and that these will include all donations from subsidiary organisations from outside the State. It is interesting that the Department confirmed in the briefing yesterday what I had suspected from my first reading of the relevant amendment, which is that this will not be governed by donation thresholds currently in place but instead it will apply to all donations in cash or coin from outside the State. That is an interesting proposal and I expect we will have some detailed debate about it. My understanding is that donations can still be made by citizens residing outside of the State in the normal way, once they are within the SIPO personal and corporate donations thresholds.

It is also very welcome that official accounting standards in terms of the recording and presentation of accounts will be required if the Minister of State's amendments are accepted, and I expect many of them will be. Again, this is very important for transparency and consistency. It will mean that every party will know what its obligations are, what the reporting and accounting standards are and, significantly and critically, the general public will be able to compare and contrast the financial position of each registered party. Nobody involved in politics in this country and nobody who is committed to democracy should fear transparency. I look forward to the debate on Committee Stage later today and throughout the week.

First, I welcome this Bill. It is important legislation. Establishing an electoral commission is long overdue. It is an important measure, and the main thrust of the Bill is one I welcome. As I outlined on Second Stage, I have a slightly different take on this from that of other parties. While I welcome the legislation as very good, it is weak in some places and must be strengthened, especially in areas around voter education. I have tabled amendments on that which we will discuss shortly on Committee Stage. I hope the Government is able to accept some of those amendments.

I agree with the other Deputies about the importance of ensuring there is strong regulation of what happens online on social media during elections. It is an area that is not sufficiently regulated, and the Bill does not do it sufficiently. There has to be very strong transparency regulation and restrictions in that area. It is certainly something on which I am happy to work with other Deputies and other parties.

Regarding the process in respect of the later amendments that have been introduced by the Government, I have no issue with being flexible and efficient in the legislative process but we must have a certain amount of time built in to allow for sufficient scrutiny. To explain, we were given the briefing note from the Department on these new amendments when it was emailed to us at 12.05 p.m. today, approximately three and a half hours before this debate. We have other things to do so it is not as if we can simply drop everything else and go straight to the briefing note and analyse it. A group of these amendments are about more transparency in the electoral process, but we need more transparency in the legislative process, which means that if a briefing note is circulated about new amendments, and it a good idea to have a briefing note circulated, and it is received three and a half hours in advance, after only receiving the briefing yesterday, there is insufficient time to engage and to scrutinise properly.

I raise those points not to be awkward but to be helpful. We want to be able to scrutinise the legislation and the amendments as much as possible and we need an adequate amount of time to do so. I hope that can be taken on board.

I very much welcome the amendments on same-day island voting and I recognise the work done by Deputy Ó Cuív on that. These are welcome measures. They are long overdue and very important. People on the islands have made the case strongly that they should not be treated any differently from anyone else, that there are not the same barriers to transport of ballot boxes as there might have been in the past and that, especially in the modern era, there can be very consequential developments in elections right up towards the end in respect of the national debate. They feel they should not be put at any disadvantage when they cast their votes. It is very important that the Government has taken that on board.

As for the restrictions in not allowing donations through cryptocurrencies, given that that is not properly regulated and there is a lack of traceability, I support those measures. It may be that at some point in the future, matters may be different and this may need to be changed but that makes sense at the moment.

I very much welcome another long-overdue measure, that political donations accounts can be opened up in credit unions. It is a small thing but it has been a source of a lot of frustration to people that they cannot go to credit unions to open such accounts. This measure is important symbolically in recognising the very important role of credit unions, and there is no good reason it should not have been facilitated in the first place.

I also welcome the amendments on transparency regarding properties and ownership in respect of political parties. I note the Government is not supporting my Bill on a land price register, which would give greater transparency on ownership of land, including development land, but at least we will have that transparency in respect of political parties, if no one else, in terms of land interests. If the Government votes down my land price register Bill, I will be back as quick as I possibly can with a revised Bill on that issue.

Finally, people can look at this Bill and wonder whether these issues matter and whether they are technical. They absolutely matter to the heart of our democracy. Money can have an absolutely corrosive effect on democracy. We have seen that, very sadly, with the recent events in Robb Elementary School, Uvalde, Texas, where children and their teachers were murdered in a society where there is an absolute lack of effective gun control as a direct result of the corrosive effect that money has in the US political system and that the US gun lobby has in lobbying the US political system. That is at its most extreme the highly corrosive effect money can have on the political system. We have seen the corrosive effect of money on politics in Ireland, especially its effect on our planning system, and we have in turn seen some detrimental effects of that. We see in our planning system to this day developments happening without sufficient infrastructure, proper childcare places or schools going in as a direct result of changes made in our planning system due to lobbying and due to a lack of transparency in respect of the influence of lobbyists on our planning system. These things have an effect on people's lives. It is important to do as much as we can to make our system as transparent as possible. That is why our measures have to go beyond the measures in this Bill in respect of the electoral system, welcome though they are. They are one part of the equation and, on their own, not sufficient.

Deputy Mattie McGrath, I believe you are sharing with your colleagues.

I am sharing with Deputy Michael Collins and possibly an Teachta Danny Healy-Rae if he arrives.

I too welcome this long-overdue electoral reform. In many areas the measures could be wider than what is proposed, but I understand that small steps are important. I pay tribute to the many people I have worked with over the years in the county councils, South Tipperary County Council and then North Tipperary County Council, who helped out, did a lot of work and updated the register. They were really in a void and a vacuum. They did not have the proper information a lot of the time but they did their best with the limited resources they had. The electoral register was, come election day, often in a bit of a mess. Whole streets were knocked off it and there was anguish and so on. I hope we can avoid that.

I see there is to be a rolling aspect to when 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds can get involved and get on the register, if they are interested in doing so. That is very important. We hear debates and clamours for people to get the vote at 16, but we should at least get them involved. I spoke to cara liom in the canteen just a few minutes ago. I had her daughter visit here previously. I worked with his parents some years ago. The daughter has just turned 18. I asked if she was registered. It should not be beyond possible nowadays and in this modern era - although when we see what happened in Dublin Airport at the weekend, one would have to be left bewildered - that people when they get their PPS numbers are automatically put on a register when they are ocht mbliana déag d'aois. They should be. Why do we have to be so archaic and so slow? I welcome the effective engagement with the 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds, but that should happen automatically.

Then there are the death certificates. It is awfully offensive to people to get post and to see many different issues with the electoral register when there is a death in the family. There should be some link-ins with the death certificates. This is 2022. I do not know why this is so far back and so outdated. As I said, however, we are making some progress, I hope.

Then there is electoral reform around donations and so on. Certainly, we had the wild west for decades, and we now have SIPO, which does a very good job. The vast majority of people are engaged with it and comply 99.9%, and rightly so. When they misbehave and do not do proper returns, they are dealt with severely.

Obviously, electoral reform is a huge issue. Many young people want the right to vote. Maybe we have to look at implementing rules and regulations regarding people who do not vote but who have the right to vote. Many people in this country, including my namesake, gave their life for that. It is sad to think that many people could not care to take the journey down the road to vote on voting day. I think a regulation in that regard has to be introduced.

Also, I am very worried, when it comes to electoral reform, about how the political system could be interfering, especially in boundaries and the reissuing of boundaries. A number of years ago, in my constituency we lost part of Dunmanway and lost Enniskean, Castletown Kinneigh and Newcestown. I will not go any further. I could probably name many of the west Cork townlands but you might get annoyed with me, a Cheann Comhairle. The people in those areas keep telling me they have no connection with the constituency they were put into. These are west Cork towns, villages and areas, and these people cannot understand for the life of them why they were taken out and put into the north Cork, Macroom and Ballincollig area. They keep coming to me. I have no issue with that or with trying to help them, but it does not make any sense that they have no relation to their constituency. Take the people of Enniskean. Ballineen is almost the same town and it is split down the middle, so one area is in one constituency and Ballineen is in the Cork South-West constituency. My worry is that this is to be looked at through new boundaries, electoral reform and all these commissions that are out there, but it is very strongly politically linked. It looks to me sometimes that some of these are nice little movements. The last seat might be picked up by a party that has seen its stance weakened in political society. We need to find out who in the name of God is on these committees and why the work is not being carried out by an independent commission.

As for the electoral register, I myself was a registrar years ago, and God knows they used to do a good job when there were the people on the ground carrying it out. Unfortunately, they are not there any longer.

I am glad to get the opportunity to talk on this matter because it is surely very important that the political process or the electoral process is seen to act fairly and properly. We should all aspire to get young people to vote. We hear of many youngsters who when they turn 18 years of age do not turn up on the register for whatever reason.

Something needs to be done. A bit of common sense must be applied here. I know that in schools they have the dates of birth of students, and they know their ages. At this stage, young people should be automatically put on the register when they reach 18 years of age. Instead, we find that so many of them are not on it when we go around one or two weeks before an election. It is absolutely ridiculous. Given all the information the authorities have, including PPS numbers and the whereabouts of people, as well as the census, in the era in which we live there should be some way for automatic registration. When people move, they are taken off the register in the area where they lived - whoever is good enough to do that - but they have no vote in the new area. Although they are taken off automatically, they are not put on automatically. We find ourselves with an awful lot of work to do. It is my belief that nobody should be taken off the register unless they are put on it somewhere else. I know the political parties have done this in the past. They take people off, but they do not look to put them on where they go. This is something on which we should all work together to ensure that every youngster and person who is in an area has an entitlement to vote, whoever they vote for. I hope they vote for me when my name is on the ballot paper, but they should surely vote for someone. We should all ensure that they have a vote.

They will have to vote in time too.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this important legislation. I support the Government's intention to provide for same-day voting on islands in elections and referendums. This would affect many island voters in my constituency of Donegal who have been advocating for same-day voting for a long time. There is no reason why island voters should be forced to vote in advance. It is important that every voter is allowed access to all information on upcoming elections and referendums. This includes making sure that everyone has the ability to watch late debates and follow changing stories before casting their votes. Island voters should not be treated any differently to the rest of the country and I am pleased to see that the intention is that they will not be any longer. We must ensure that happens. Same-day voting is more than doable for all the islands at this stage with modern communication methods.

I also support the Government's intention to amend the Electoral Act 1997. This is long overdue. I am pleased that we are finally addressing areas in this Act that require amendment. I specifically support the amendment of section 22 of the Electoral Act. I hope the Government will take on board the amendments that have been put forward regarding the term "political purposes". The inclusion of this term has created very unfortunate unforeseen consequences. I was very disappointed to see that this was not addressed in the drafting of the Electoral Reform Bill 2022. I urge the Government to accept the proposed amendments to address the issue.

A very important aspect of modern, democratic societies is ensuring that civil society has a voice and plays an important role in policymaking. To take away this role would be incredibly undemocratic and would only serve to weaken legislation in this country. However, as the law currently defines it, "political purposes" actually encompasses human rights and social justice work. Shockingly, the inclusion of this definition in the Electoral Act 1997 has placed a ban on any group of citizens raising money to campaign for a particular policy or to criticise the activities of the Government. Groups now run the risk of facing serious financial penalties and possible imprisonment for speaking out on the very issues most of them have first-hand experience of dealing with.

Advocacy groups receiving donations and working on the ground should be able to speak out, advise and criticise Government policies. Furthermore, we should be actively seeking to include these voices. Most often, these are the groups that are seeing and experiencing the issues at first hand, and they have played an incredibly important role in influencing policy in this country. We should be capable of including a definition that differentiates between community and advocacy groups and groups with private sector influence. Obviously, the intent behind the legislation in the first place was to curb the corporate lobbyists. It should be possible to do that without curbing community groups as well. The Electoral Act seriously compromises Ireland's democratic values in disallowing advocacy groups from undertaking this role. Advocacy must be supported at all costs. We must do all we can to protect the rights of groups to continue their work. Accordingly, I sincerely hope that this particular amendment is accepted.

Overall, I support this motion. However, I hope that the committee's input and the many Opposition amendments put forward are equally supported by the Government as this legislation passes through all Stages. It is important that while we facilitate things happening in this House, the Government should be capable of facilitating work in the committee and taking on board amendments that have value put forward by the Opposition as well.

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Leas-Cheann Comhairle as an deis teacht ar ais. I wish to address a couple of issues I believe are important in this debate. We do have a wonderful electoral system in this State. The PR-STV system does provide for very clear representation within the political institutions, which is very important. When we have a system whereby various minority voices are excluded for whatever reason, that leads to real difficulties within the political system. First, those minority voices are very important, and it is important that they have an influence over the direction of the country. We can learn a lot from those minority voices. Also, if minority voices are continuously blocked and they feel they do not have a democratic opportunity to get their point across, that can lead to frustration within a democracy and to negative outcomes as well. It is important that we try to maintain, as much as possible, the best representation within the democracy that we have.

In other countries, such as the United States and Britain, we see that when the representation element is not built within the system it can lead to significant difficulties. In the United States, if a person is not voting for Trump or Biden, he or she literally does not have another option in the system there. That is part of the polarising element that can be found sometimes in the United States. It is the same in Britain. Voters do not have another option because the first-past-the-post system militates against a third or fourth option ever becoming available to people, so they are forced into those two poles, in terms of political choices. I ask the Minister of State to focus on this, if he can, to make sure that in this country we have the most representative political system.

I understand that six-seat constituencies are available to the Minister and the commission under the Constitution, yet we have not seen such constituencies used in this State for probably well over 50 years. When I spoke to a Minister of State recently, I suggested that the country is full of three-seat constituencies, which militate against proper representation, and that we should be moving to six-seat constituencies. The Minister of State said the big parties would not like that. Therein lies one of the difficulties that we have in this entire process. It should not be about what the big parties want in the design of our electoral system. It should be about ensuring that we have the clearest representation possible from the electorate into the number of men and women sitting in this Chamber. That is why I would advise the Minister of State to consider six-seat constituencies. When I look at County Meath, for example, it has six Deputies, but it delivers them through two three-seat constituencies. That could result in a major difficulty because it ensures that sections of the political views of the people of the county are simply never going to be represented in here.

The other element I would like the Minister of State to focus on is the slivers of counties that find themselves in constituencies outside of those counties. Again, in County Meath, we have a sliver of Westmeath, around the Castlepollard to Delvin area, which is part of Meath West and a sliver of the eastern part of the county in the Louth constituency. What happens often times with these types of slivers is that they fall between two stools.

They do not have an electorate large enough to elect a Deputy and, therefore, Deputies in general start to focus their attention on where the electorate population is. For many years, that part of Westmeath did not have a Deputy's constituency office. It now has two, thankfully, as Aontú and Sinn Féin both have offices in that constituency. It is important we try our damnedest to make sure those slivers do not happen because on a county council basis, a political basis and even in the mindset of the people who live in the area, people are aligned to counties. When 6,000 or 7,000 people are appended to another constituency, they often do not get the representation they are entitled to and that is a mistake.

I am reminded of a scene in "Killinaskully", where a lady who looks about 90 years old tells a local politician he can be assured of her vote and adds that he can be assured of her mammy's vote as well. The politician thanks her and inquires how long her mammy has been dead at this stage. A constituent in my county had voting cards sent to him from the age of two. I know numerous people to whom voting cards are sent in a half-dozen locations. It makes a mockery of the register and allows for electoral fraud. When we start to talk about the issue of voter turnout, we are actually talking about voter turnout in the context of a hocus-pocus register. We are not getting the actual turnout in respect of the number of citizens in a constituency who can vote.

The Minister has an opportunity to resolve some of these issues. I ask him to be bold and courageous, to step outside the actions taken over the past 20 to 40 years, to build in six-seater constituencies where they would fit within county lines and where they would give far more representation to citizens, and then make sure the integrity of counties is protected in future.

I was looking ahead at statements on transport where the Government is allowed to reply, but in this instance it is not. I made the mistake so the Minister of State can make a comment.

I again thank the Deputies. We are moving the Bill to Committee Stage.

Question put and agreed to.
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