The main purpose of this Bill is to give effect to the recommendations contains in the Interim Report of the Joint Committee on Electoral Law which was presented to the Dáil on 26th October and to this House on the 9th November, 1960. Advantage is being taken of the Bill also to continue two temporary electoral enactments which would otherwise expire at the end of the present year and to extend the maximum period between a dissolution of Dáil Éireann or the issue of a writ for a bye-elction and the holding of the poll.
The Acts of 1868 and 1869 mentioned in Section 2 of the Bill deal, respectively, with petitions against the election of candidates to parliament and with the costs of certain types of parliamentary inquiries. They are temporary statutes and, in the past, have been continued by Expiring Laws Acts; the last such Act, passed in 1952, extended their life up to 31st December, 1960. It is considered to be appropriate to continue them by this Electoral Bill until such time as their provisions can be brought into relationship with modern conditions and assimilated into our general electoral code.
The statutory prohibition on the registration of Gardaí as Dáil electors is being repealed under Section 3 of the Bill and section 6 provides that all members of the Garda Síochána and of the Defence Forces will, in future, be registered as postal voters. To preserve a right which soldiers already possess, the Bill proposes to give members of the Defence Forces the option of choosing to be registered in the constituency where they would be ordinarily resident but for their services with the Forces.
A move to simplify the procedure in postal voting is made in Section 8, which provides for the substitution of a simple receipt for the formal declaration of identity which, up to this, had to accompany each postal ballot paper sent to voters at election time.
An important change is being made by Section 4 in regard to the minimum age at which a person may be registered as an elector. Heretofore, a person could not be registered unless he had attained the age of 21 years on or before 15th September in the year preceding the publication of the register. In effect, this has meant that a minimum age of 21 years and 7 months on the date on which the register comes into force has been necessary to secure registration. The Bill proposes that the register now being compiled and future registers should include the names of all persons, otherwise qualified, who will have reached the age of 21 years by the 15th April on which the register comes into operation. It is estimated that this provision should admit up to 25,000 additional young electors on to the register now being prepared.
An extension of the maximum period which may elapse between the proclamation dissolving Dáil Éireann or the receipt by a returning officer of a writ for a bye-election and the polling day is proposed by section 7. The purpose of the change is to enable a sufficiently long period to be fixed between nomination and polling to allow ballot papers to be sent to postal voters who may be serving abroad and to be returned by them in time to be counted at an election. It is also proposed that the Minister for Local Government rather than the returning officer should fix the polling day at a bye-election.
The only recommendations of the Joint Committee which I found myself unable to accept without any qualification were certain of those relating to voting by blind and incapacitated electors. Briefly, I consider that a companion should be allowed to assist one or two blind or incapacitated voters to mark their ballot papers instead of only one such voter as recommended by the Joint Committee, and I have not adopted their recommendation that a companion should be required to complete a declaration of secrecy. On the other hand, the Bill contains a condition, additional to those suggested by the Joint Committee, requiring companions assisting such voters to be at least 16 years of age.
As the law stands at present, a presiding officer may refuse to accede to a request by a blind or incapacitated voter that his ballot paper be marked for him where the request is made within four hours of the close of the poll and the officer considers that it would unduly obstruct the voting of other electors to comply with the request. This discretion to refuse will remain in cases where the presiding officer is himself requested, under the existing procedure, to mark a ballot paper in the presence of the agents of candidates, for a blind or incapacitated voter, but it will not apply where such a voter wishes to have his paper marked for him by a companion.
In proposing these slight departures from the recommendations of the Joint Committee and the introduction of the new provisions I am acceding to pressing representations which were made to me by a deputation from the National League of the Blind shortly after the Interim Report was published. I feel that the changes are reasonable and that they should be accepted.
The changes which are proposed in relation to the Dáil electoral code under Parts I and II of the Bill will, where appropriate, be made also in the codes dealing with presidential elections, referenda and local elections under Parts III, IV and V of the Bill.
In conclusion, I would like to place on record my appreciation of the work which is being done by the Joint Committee on Electoral Law and, in particular, for the expeditious manner in which they completed and presented the Interim Report which has formed the basis for the major part of this Bill. The law which they have under examination is voluminous and extremely complex and we all look forward to a large measure of rationalisation and consolidation as a result of their deliberations. Because it is essential that certain changes provided for in this Bill should be given legislative effect in the current parliamentary session the scope of the measure is necessarily restricted. I would suggest, however, that any ideas on electoral matters which occur to Senators and which do not directly relate to the provisions of the Bill might appropriately be submitted by them for consideration by the Joint Committee.