I welcome the Minister to the House.
Electoral (No. 2) Bill, 1991: Second Stage (Resumed).
Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
I, too, welcome the new Minister. Last week some of my remarks were of a general nature on this extensive Bill in terms of the democracy we and most other countries nowadays enjoy and some aspects of the proportional representation transferable votes system we are working. The Bill itself is very detailed giving implementation to our voting arrangements. An essential part of democracy is that an individual has the opportunity to vote. There are a few circumstances here where this does not perhaps occur very readily. Last week we mentioned people such as seamen and fishermen, a number of groups like that, who because of their occupation find in practice that it was difficult to vote and so, effectively, they are deprived of their voting rights. I think in such cases we should consider extending the postal voting arrangements.
Last week we spoke of those many Irish citizens, all too many, who are outside this country and who do not have the opportunity to vote. Many other countries not merely make it possible for citizens to vote when away from the home country; they make it obligatory. If you are an Australian citizen and there is an Australian election you must make arrangements to vote at the nearest Australian embassy or consulate. You are liable to be fined if you do not vote. I think perhaps that is carrying it to extremes in the opposite direction but it has always seemed to me highly unsatisfactory and has in many ways hindered the progress of this country that so many people, particularly young people, have been unable to vote on matters which crucially affected them and on which they would have very strong views, such as emigration.
There are other circumstances where people can be deprived of using their vote. All of us know that the majority of voters attend voting stations in the evening. There is this traditional rush from about 6.30 p.m. or 7 o'clock onwards, particularly in the towns, and for two hours there is a period of pretty frenetic activity at the polling stations. Invariably, there will always be some people who are late, but most of the voting in the urban areas is compressed into those two hours. Effectively, many people are unable to vote during the course of the day. They cannot walk away from their work. They cannot easily travel five, ten or 20 miles back to their home where their local polling station is located. I feel we should look at the question of extending the times for voting. It would seem not unreasonable to extend voting times until 10 o'clock in the evening and this at least would give many people the opportunity to vote. If we are talking about democracy and about people voting we should try as far as we can to make it as readily available for them to do so.
Another factor which in practice often deprives people of a vote, even though they make the effort to do so, is this business in a city of chopping and changing the location of the polling stations. We all know of the experience of people coming home from work, having a quick meal, arriving at the polling station at 7.30 p.m. and finding that they have to go to some other polling station two or three miles away. It is not a very satisfactory situation. There are a number of practical points like this which could be attended to and which would make democracy a lot more real.
Again, who is entitled to vote? If I understand it correctly, under this Bill we are still talking about 21-year-olds. One wonders should voting be restricted to those who are 21 years old and above — and in practice it means considerably above that age. Surely in this day and age we should be considering voting arrangements at a considerably earlier age and also ensure that when people reach that age they are entitled to vote rather than having to wait an extra year until the register is reorganised.
All of us in this House and the other House have seen examples of people who have been omitted from the register through a mistake not of their making. In this day and age, with computerised arrangements for checking registers, this could be done up to a week beforehand. The arrangements we see in this Bill are somewhat cumbersome and outdated. You can have transfer of information and production of registers in a matter of days now. It seems horribly outdated and quill pen-type legislation in relation to the updating of registers. Why should somebody be deprived of a vote because of a clumsy, outdated form of registration procedure which is more reminiscent of the 19th century than 1992? There are a number of practical points like that which we should look at.
I am fascinated by Part II of the Fourth Schedule to the Bill where we have this form of ballot paper. I wonder is there someone who has knowledge we do not have and who is aware of the fact that there is going to be a Liberal Socialist Party, an Urban Party, Cumann na Saoránach, a Young Ireland Party, a National League and a Rural Party or is this just imaginatively looking towards the future.
I welcome the Bill. It is important that we look regularly at how our democratic system works, that we look at our electoral system and update it in the light of changes taking place in our lives, in the media and in society generally. It is important that we modernise our approach to our electoral system. The Bill regularises many of the anomalies and tidies up much of the previous legislation. This is welcome.
Changes which are particularly welcome in the Bill include the new approach to compiling the register of electors. It is inappropriate at present that the work of checking the register of electors must take place over Christmas, a time when people have many things on their minds and have different agendas to pursue. I have always thought it was a very inappropriate time.
The fact that people can be placed on a supplementary list of electors is welcome. The approach of placing people on the register up to seven days prior to the election should be considered. As all politicians know, while canvassing we come across errors which we cannot fully explain. In effect, they are mistakes that are made in the system. It is a human system so human frailty comes into play. It would be important if we could correct those when they come to light during canvassing time.
The removal of the need for disabled persons to give a certificate of fitness is welcome. It is important that disabled persons are not hindered from voting in any way. They have a right to do so and often people who are disabled have a great interest in what is happening in the political scene and are au fait with developments in the campaign.
Is there a supplementary register for disabled and special voters? Would those who become disabled after the compilation of the official register, be able to go on the supplementary register? At present, the closing date is 31 October. We are often asked by disabled people if they can go on the register of electors after that date; at present they cannot. Could the same approach be taken to a supplementary special list as is taken to the supplementary register of electors?
It is important that spurious candidates would not confuse the ballot paper and the Bill covers this aspect. However, I have reservations about increasing the election deposit from £100 to £500. The Bill reduces the number of votes to be obtained from a third to a quarter of the quota but perhaps this could be reduced to a fifth or a sixth of the quota which would allow those with limited means to contest an election.
The changes in the approach to polling booths is welcome. For too long, people had to run the gauntlet of canvassers putting literature into their hands which they had no opportunity to read in any event. This was embarrassing for voters. We are all at fault and I would say mea culpa as quickly as anybody else. I am sure 99.9 per cent of voters have made up their minds before they leave their homes or their place of work who they are voting. This is a welcome approach in the Bill.
I welcome the change in regard to the timescale for preparing the register of electors. The present position is that the draft register is corrected over the Christmas period. It is published on 8 or 9 December and names must be supplied by 15 January. The time is inappropriate and political parties whose duty it is to correct the register of electors found it quite difficult to interest their members in properly checking the register of electors. This led to mistakes not being discovered.
It is very difficult to explain at election time why someone was left off the register. There is a feeling among the electorate that compiling the register is an exact science. It is not. The human factor comes into play. It is impossible to explain to somebody — and sometimes we are at a loss to explain — when they have been on the register for 20 or 30 years why they are suddenly omitted through a genuine mistake. They feel very aggrieved. Sometimes they are embarrassed if they do not find out until they present themselves at their polling station and are told they do not have a vote. Too many people have been disenfranchised in this way. The proposal for the publication of a supplementary list to the voters register will be helpful. It will allow mistakes and failures to place eligible voters on the list to be corrected before calling the election.
As I said, it is important that disabled persons be given the facility to cast their votes, as is their right under the Constitution. The introduction of the right to vote in their homes was a welcome development in its time. However, it is universally accepted that the requirement for inclusion on the special voters list that they present a medical certificate showing they are of sound mind is wrong. Thankfully, that is corrected in the Bill.
The deposit for candidates fighting a Dáil election has been increased from £100 to £500. While it is necessary to ensure that candidates who have no interest in an election other than to confuse the electorate are deterred from doing so, people who have a genuine wish to be involved in the democratic process may be afraid to do so if they cannot afford the £500 deposit and fear they may not recover it. I remember a situation some time ago where a candidate registered himself at several elections and did not campaign in any of them. This procedure could create confusion and be used by people who have an objection to the democratic process and would like to see it undermined. However people who cannot afford this kind of money should not be prevented from seeking election. The deposit of £500 will only discourage a frivolous candidate who has means, but it will debar serious candidates who have no means and who are perhaps unemployed. The level of votes one needs to qualify for a refund of the deposit is reduced from one-third to one-quarter of the quota, maybe the Minister should reduce this further to one-fifth or even one-sixth of the quota.
If a candidate for the unemployed presented himself at the next Dáil election it would be impossible to judge what level of support such a candidate would get at election time. If a candidate feels he would get some support he should have the opportunity to present his point of view. If the quota were reduced it might overcome the Minister's difficulty in trying to discourage candidates who have no interest in the election other than to damage the system.
I welcome the power in the Bill to deal with interference to an obstruction of electors outside polling stations and the prohibition of all canvassing in the vicinity of stations. I have thought about this over many years and have mentioned on a few occasion to my local council that something should be done about this. At various polling stations in my constituency it was almost physically impossible to get through the number of canvassers, party supporters and helpers outside the station. This tends to be much more pronounced in cities than in rural areas. I am sure it intimidates many people, particularly young people voting for the first time. It must cause confusion and could even deter people, who are not prepared for such hassle, from voting. I welcome the fact that people will now be able to make up their minds and walk freely into polling booths, and I hope this system will be properly policed.
With regard to opinion polls and their prohibition seven days before the election, the previous Minister was not in favour of banning radio polls, TV polls or local radio sampling and the logical progression is that they, too, must be included in the ban.
I take this opportunity to congratulate the new Minister and wish him well in his office. I know he will do a very good job.
Whether opinion polls influence the electorate is a much debated point and they have very little influence on the outcome of the elections. They just reflect the views of the people. Nine years ago the Council of Europe set up a parliamentary committee on opinion polls which concluded that the objective publication of opinion polls did not have a discernible influence on the results. Several principles have been infringed by the approach taken in the Bill, in particular the right to free speech and the right to express one's opinion. Is it illegal now if somebody expresses an opinion to a person who is taking an opinion poll illegally during the final seven days of an election because this Bill restricts information to the electorate in that period. Have the electorate, the press and the media the right to judge the views of the people in the final days of an election? It will also infringe on the freedom of the press. They will not have the right to take opinion polls and get an objective view of the position during the last seven days in the run up to an election.
I am disappointed that the Bill does not mention introducing votes for emigrants. Emigrants have a right to have their views expressed in the Oireachtas. Fine Gael believe that the Seanad could be a very good forum for emigrants to express their views and concerns, of which we tend to wash our hands, and on developments in the economy which might facilitate their lot if they return home. The reason for suggesting the Seanad is that there is a much longer election campaign period which would allow many emigrants to participate in the polling process than would the shorter three to four week Dáil election campaign. It is Fine Gael's view that there should be three Members of this House representing emigrants who would express the views of so many of our people who have been forced to leave our shores.
Section 11 (1) (a) states:
A person shall not be registered as an elector more than once in any registration area nor in more than one such area.
That is welcome in that it tries to overcome the problem of double or treble registration. There should be facility so that students could choose where they would register. I do not know how it could be done but if they were allowed to register in two places they would have to opt for one. Many students attend regional technical colleges or university in Dublin, Cork, Galway or Limerick and at election time they do not vote because most of them are registered at their home place and do not have the facility to travel home to vote.
During the last council elections, many students registered at their colleges with a view to voting in that area, but it so happened that the election was held during examinations and most of the colleges had closed. Some students have very strong views on issues that are raised at election time and we should provide assistance for them to ensure that they are not disenfranchised. I appreciate the point the Minister makes that we must ensure this facility is not misused, which is not unknown in this country.
I referred to the special voters list under section 17. Will a supplementary register for special voters be accepted? On the registration of political parties, I wish to express a view similar to that of Senator Murphy. Should political parties who promote violence, murder and have as their aim the destruction of democracy be allowed to stand for election? I have strong views on that. Anybody who takes life and promotes violence or anybody representing that point of view should not be allowed to present their view. We do not allow criminals or those engaged in organised crime to present their views as a political party and we should not allow people who have a pseudo-political approach to enter the democratic system.
Under section 41 a person who has not reached the age of 21 years is disqualified from membership of the Dáil. For many years, people over the age of 18 have been eligible to vote. Today people of 18 years of age are as mature as people in their mid-twenties were 20 or 30 years ago. Is it not time that people over 18 years of age were eligible to stand for election to Dáil and Seanad Éireann?
I welcome the Bill. It is a tidying up operation and introduces new systems. We have some difficulties with it and we hope to introduce amendments on Committee Stage. I congratulate the Minister on his appointment.
I join in the congratulations to the Minister and wish him well with his portfolio. I hope he has a long and successful office. I spoke on the Adjournment on two occasions and on each occasion the then Minister for the Environment was no longer the Minister the following day. I hope what I have to say today does not have a serious effect on his future political career.
The legislation before us is very important. It is not the legislation which we commonly deal with, which tends to be of a technical nature. This is at the very heart of what democracy is about. The object of such legislation should be to facilitate to the very widest extent possible those who wish to participate in the democratic process, those who wish to register their views through the ballot box and not by other means. It should also offer the widest possible scope to people in the State to participate in the democratic process and be candidates for election.
I realise that the objective of the legislation is to regulate the way we conduct our democratic elections and to eliminate, as far as possible, abuses which have taken place in the past. We must admit that there have been abuses and we must ensure that there are no such abuses in the future. The legislation consolidates Acts going back to the last century and for that it is to be commended.
There are certain aspects, however, about which I have some concerns. One aspect I am not particularly concerned about and which is worthy of mention is the undertaking by the State to meet a proportion of the cost of preparing the register of electors. In the past this was on a 50:50 basis, shared with the authority responsible for preparing the register but it is envisaged in this legislation that the contribution would increase to 75 per cent. I do not see any reason it should not go much higher than that. It is ultimately the State's responsibility rather than the local authority's to ensure the register is reliable and accurate and for that, the State should pay. While the 75 per cent contribution is welcome it might be even higher than that.
Section 103 regulates the manner in which people with certain disabilities, people who are illiterate or blind, can vote. It deals with those matters fairly adequately. Why is it necessary to ask a companion attending somebody in a polling station if they have marked more than one ballot paper at the election? If they mark more than one ballot paper they would be disqualified. In my constituency there is a large facility for disabled persons who are attended to at the polling booth by the nursing staff in that facility. It is stretching things to require them to have a different companion for each person who enters a polling booth. I realise the dangers involved in having one person attend a large number of people when it comes to casting votes, but that is a very restrictive measure. I am not sure whether it has been standard practice in the past, perhaps it has, but I believe it to be restrictive. There are aspects of section 103 which discriminate against people who have disabilities. For instance, subsection (6) states:
A request made by a Dáil elector within two hours before the hour fixed by the Minister for the close of the poll to have his ballot paper marked for him under this section, otherwise than by a companion may be refused by the presiding officer if,...
and goes on to state the grounds on which the presiding officer can refuse to do so. I can readily understand in the last minute rush the pressures on the presiding officer to ensure that all those who attend at the poll can actually cast their vote. I believe that a person who has a disability or a person who is illiterate is just as entitled to cast their vote at any time while the polling station is open as any other person in our State. I fully realise the practicable problems involved but I do not think that dealing with it in this way is equitable in this day and age.
As to the matter of the deposit being demanded, several Senators have commented on this and there have been differing views. The overriding view is that the deposit should be such as to prevent people putting their names forward for election on a purely frivolous basis. I am not so sure that frivolity would do any harm in a lot of elections. It might benefit us at times.
I take the point that it would be discriminatory to prevent somebody of limited means from becoming a candidate for a Dáil election because of the deposit requirement of £500. I take a fairly liberal view on that. I know that when Deputy O'Hanlon opened this debate as Minister he said that if the original requirment of £100 were adjusted to allow for inflation it would now be £3,000. I do not think that is the point at issue. As far as possible those who wish to put themselves forward as candidates should be facilitated. Running an election campaign is a very costly exercise so therefore, frivolous candidature should not be a serious problem. I support Senator Neville's assertion that if the £500 figure is adopted, the quota required to recover the deposit should be reduced even further than the quarter of a quota proposed under the Bill.
I am concerned about section 57 of the Bill which provides for free postage and I note that its provisions are confined to Dáil elections. I am uncertain candidates for the European elections have the same facility. Perhaps they have and it is dealt with in legislation other than this but my reading of that section suggests that a grey area exists about the entitlements of Euro candidates. It should logically follow that people running in the European election campaign, as I did, should have that postage facility available to them.
There is, of course, an alternative to the State expense of free postage. A constituency of 90,000 electors where candidates are being grouped would have the right to send out 90,000 letters which would be a significant postage cost. I can think of certain political situations where candidates would prefer to receive this money to conduct their campaign rather than have literature sent through the post, much of which ends up in waste paper baskets. Perhaps that in itself is a frivolous statement and I may be succumbing to the frivolity I was trying to inadvertently encourage in relation to prospective candidates in a Dáil election.
The prohibition of political activity adjacent to a polling station is a desirable and commendable measure. We all know of cases where voters entering polling stations have had to run the gauntlet of groups of supporters thrusting literature at them and exhorting them to vote in a particular way. There can be few people, if any, who have not formed a clear idea before they reach a polling station of how they are going to vote. In a democracy people who go to cast their vote should be able to do so unhindered by anyone; for that reason the legislation is to be commended. I would go further than the 50 metres unit and extend it to 100 metres; in fact there could be a case for excluding such activity altogether. People with microphones are in a position to try to influence people from a distance of 50 metres, although I am not certain they succeed.
A few years ago I drove through England during a general election and it was remarkable how few people positioned themselves outside polling stations. In many cases there were no people at all which was most unlike the conduct of Irish elections. I could be argued that the result in many British constitutencies is a foregone conclusion and the possibility of influencing people at the polling station is minimal given their system of election. The candidate should have access to the roped off area but on condition that no literature is distributed.
The difficulty of enforcing this provision concerns me. In a Dáil election in the constitutency of Kildare several years ago one particular political party conveyed peole to the polling station which was situated in a school. All the political parties were camped outside the gate and not within the large school grounds but this particular party had a bus adorned with its election literature which was driven to the door of the polling station, at least 100 metres from the entrance and parked there prominently for long periods while its occupants voted. It then conveyed them back and returned as quickly as possible to take up its position outside the polling station door. This was brought to the attention of the local gardaí who were uncertain as to how they might deal with the matter. I can understand that the law might be on their side but in a small community these situations can create difficulty.
I wonder about our capacity to police this provision. Political parties are obliged to conduct themselves within the law which may be sufficient to ensure enforcement of this section. I think there is a case for banning the affixing of posters to telegraph and ESB poles; I know it can be illegal to put posters on ESB poles. It is possible to get cross-party agreement in a pub that putting up posters is not effective but once one poster appears, then others inevitably follow.
We come to the question of the doubtful ballot paper and all of us have attended counts where the returning officer had to deal with this matter. It possibly should be done by way of a standard mark; under the legislation there is quite a degree of flexibility on how this could be done, to ensure that ballot papers are not referred for adjudication a second or a third time. An official stamp is used in a polling station by the presiding officer and something similar could be used by the returning officer at a count.
Special problems may arise when two elections are held on the same day as happened in the 1989 Dáil/European elections. People voted one, two, three on one ballot paper and four, five, six on the next ballot paper and I think I am correct in saying that in all but one of the constituencies the returning officers allowed the four, five and six to be regarded as a one, two and three so that those papers could be admitted. In Leinster, however, they were not admitted and there was a very close finish which resulted in a court case. I do not want to interfere with the discretion of the returning officer as to how he or she conducts the count but this area needs attention. It is logical to assume that if a four, a five, and a six appear on a ballot paper and there is no one, two or three, that the figure four can be taken as one, the five as two and the six as three, although I accept that in Leinster the returning officer acted as she thought right.
The legislation deals satisfactorily with petitions in the event of people being unhappy with the outcome of an election. It is correct to refer it to the High Court without reference to the Oireachtas. I note that a review of the Euro constituencies is to be carried out before 1 December 1993. A case could be made that the review should relate to the regions. We are meant to have a Community of the regions, or to be heading in that direction, and the review should be done on a regional basis.
As far as possible constituencies should contain a larger rather than a smaller number of seats which may be inconsistent. If one takes the west of Ireland as an example of a region with a declining population a review might find that on a population basis alone, that region warranted less representation than the east of the country. Given the European commitment to the regions and to cohesion and to overcoming problems arising from peripherality, representation from such areas needs to be slightly higher than it might be by reference to population figures. I say that although I am resident in the east of the country.
On the matter of the taking of opinion polls I find the Bill unsatisfactory. I do not know if opinion polls influence the outcome of elections. Several Senators have commented on this matter. I am concerned that in section 167 (2) of the Bill it says:
An opinion poll shall not be taken, or cause to be taken, on any of the 7 days immediately preceding the polling day at an election or referendum.
This section does not say anything about polls being published within seven days; it says that they may not be taken during that time. I can imagine a poll being taken eight days in advance and not published until four days beforehand; this is not prohibited by the legislation. This section may need to be amended.
I question whether opinion polls taken up to the day of an election can influence the outcome. I do not know of empirical independent evidence to suggest they do. I do not adamantly say that they should not be taken but I believe there are different types of poll. On a radio show this morning people were invited to phone a number to register an opinion on a particular matter. I do not think they are acceptable and certainly not within a few days of an election. They are not scientific, are open to manipulation, and should be investigated. I would be more flexible about the scientific polls conducted by the established market research companies and I question whether even they influence the outcome of elections.
I share the view that votes for emigrants should come within the scope of the Bill. Those who have left the country since an established date, and we could argue as to what that date should be, should be entitled to vote in Irish elections. It is not certain that their vote would be a protest vote. In any event, having been born and educated here and having to leave the country should entitle them to a vote. I realise there are provisions within the agreed Programme for Government on this matter but I would have preferred if they had been incorporated into this Bill. I look forward to the day our emigrants will be entitled to vote in our elections.
We should also consider extending the franchise to the growing number of Irish people in full-time education outside the State. With the restriction on third level places, and points system pressure, increasing numbers of young people go to England for full-time education. They are ordinarily resident within the State and have not emigrated. Some provision might be made to enable those people to vote in an Irish election without incurring the expense of returning home.
The Bill deals with the issue of making voting compulsory. In certain countries there is a legal requirement on citizens to cast their votes in an election. I do not agree with such a measure. In a free society people should be entitled not to exercise their franchise if that is their wish. There were suggestions that apathy was the reason for the low poll in the local elections where only half the electorate turned out to vote. If people choose not to vote, they forfeit their right to complain about the outcome. One cannot legitimately complain about the outcome of an election in which one has not voted, although many people do that. One of the comments one gets on an election trail is: "I would not vote for any of you; you are all the same". We may or we may not to be all the same but I tell those people: "I do not know what you will change but you will certainly change something if you go out and vote". We meet many such people every day when campaigning and if they cast their vote they would have some influence on the outcome of an election.
The subjects of registration and so on have been dealt with by several Senators. I welcome the provisions of the Bill in respect to registration and the fact that this Bill tidies up a previously untidy area. With modern technology it might be possible to go through the registration process even more quickly than is envisaged in the Bill but I believe we are taking a step in the right direction.
The central point is that people who are ordinarily entitled to vote should be enabled to do so. We all know of people turning up in good faith at polling stations believing themselves on the register of electors and then finding they are not. I know of one person who was quite distressed not to be allowed vote. If people are determined to cast their votes in an election and are upright and honourable citizens, the State should do everything in its power to ensure that they do not fail to do so because of some omission on the part of the State.
I realise that under the Supreme Court decision it was necessary to tidy up the electoral legislation so that a person could not be registered in two places. It is not clear from the Bill whether one could be registered in an area outside one's own domicile. Could one be registered in another constituency? I cannot imagine many people wanting to do it but perhaps if we all had enough friends scattered around the country who could be persuaded to register in our own constituencies it might affect the outcome of an election. This is a minor point which is not adequately covered in the Bill.
People who want to cast their votes in an Irish election should be able to do so. I would extend that to people who are not Irish citizens but who are ordinarily resident here. I would extend that provision beyond EC countries provided reciprocal arrangements were available for our citizens in those countries. I take the liberal view that if people are interested in casting their votes they should be enabled to do so.
Senator Neville raised the point of the register of political parties containing people who subscribe to violence. It should be a requirement when registering that one renounces undemocratic ways of changing society and the State and one should be required to renounce violence. If we look back at our unhappy history we can recall that an oath was mandatory before entering the Houses of the Oireachtas so there are precedents there, however undesirable certain individuals might consider them. I think there is a need to ensure that people determined to undermine the State by violent means if necessary be prohibited from participating in a process which they want to see abolished and which they want to undermine.
I welcome the Minister of State from my constituency, congratulate him, wish him well and promise to cause him the maximum amount of trouble in his period in the Department of the Environment. I wish him every success and know he will look after the interests he is charged with the same spirit of decency that has prevailed in everything he has done in politics.
It is very easy to deal with this Bill in a mundane fashion and electoral politics and procedures can be mundane. One could imagine going back 250 years in history and telling those who ruled the whole of western Europe and the rest of the world at that time that the most successful political aspiration over the following 200 years would be the belief that the best way to run a country was to invest all the instruments of political power in the people. One could tell the kings, the aristocracy and other hereditary rulers that ultimately they would be supplanted by a situation in which everyone was accountable to the people and that the argument would be not about the horrors of populism but about the structures and procedures through which that power should be channelled and controlled.
When one occupies a position such as mine in the political spectrum, one is frequently accused of being excessively naive, idealistic, etc. It is always important to remember how extraordinary democracy is. Two hundred or 300 years ago, anyone who claimed that the people could be made sovereign and trusted to take the best decisions for their country and for society in the secrecy of a ballot box would be regarded as absurdly naive. Yet not long ago in India when the late Mrs. Gandhi endeavoured first to impose a state of emergency and they to get a democratic mandate for that state of emergency, a population which by western European standards would have been regarded as poorly educated and in large numbers illiterate, when given the opportunity in a secret ballot made it quite clear what they thought of any attempt to suppress their democratic rights.
I do not think anybody should dream of underestimating the degree to which people take democracy for granted. "Taking for granted" is usually used pejoratively but ordinary people in their scepticism, sometimes cynicism and often indifference to politics and to politicians, in the way they criticise Governments, other organs of State, trade unions, the Church, etc., illustrate the degree to which democracy is taken for granted. People do not feel inhibited about expressing their views on these subjects. It ill behoves anyone in any position on the political spectrum to underestimate the degree to which people value democracy. The evidence is in the taking for granted and in the fact that people do not feel they have to vigorously defend it and articulately assert it in a way that would appeal to academics. This attitude is evident also from the incredibly sophisticated way in which people use proportional representation. On occasions when candidates have attempted to deceive or mislead them, they have been quick to distinguish between the issue in a referendum and for whom they would vote in an election when the name and a particular voting direction were linked. I remember the referendum during the Presidential election in the fifties when the slogan was "Vote Yes for de Valera" and people voted for de Valera and voted "No" at the same time showing a considerable sophistication which many of those who write about Irish society in the media today overlook or ignore. The idea that Ireland is a peasant society one step away from the peasantry of southern India that does not understand political issues, or what is being done in their name, is to grossly traduce their sophistication.
In a Bill like this one needs to stand back in awe from the electoral exercise. I can imagine all the negative arguments of 200 years ago: Look how complex it is; how difficult. How could it ever work? It is incredibly cumbersome and detailed. Look at all the possibilities for abuse but similar reservations are raised about most new ideas.
The legislation in its complexity reflects the inherent difficulty; there is hardly anything more awe-inspiring than the idea that every citizen will cast a vote in total secrecy and be accountable to nobody except himself or herself and that their views will decide the future direction of a country. It is an extraordinary privilege and one that deserves an occasional attempt at eulogy.
One of the questions to arise in the course of this debate is whether people should be required to make a commitment to use democratic means only to achieve political change. At first glance that has a great ring to it. It suggests that we should exclude from elections people who refuse to abandon the use of violence to achieve political ends or exact a declaration from them to that extent. The cynic in me says that if a person is prepared to go around shooting people to achieve a political end he or she will not have much trouble perjuring themselves to get around a requirement that they undertake not to support violence. People whose consciences allow them to kill people they disagree with without great qualms of guilt will not have a problem with a simple matter of perjury.
This view of the men of violence is a highly selective one. I remember both Houses of the Oireachtas, with the exception of about 25 or 30 of us, giving a standing ovation to a man who was responsible for the deaths of perhaps 100,000 people in Central America, who organised a war to undermine the elected Government in Nicaragua and who became a hero in many quarters for organising a war to undermine an elected government in a neighbouring state. I do not believe the Members who talk loudest in this House about excluding men of violence from the democratic process are prepared to carry that to its logical conclusion and refuse to honour in our presence men of violence who run other countries and who are guilty of violence on a scale and of a proportion indescribably larger than the men of violence in this State.
Apart from violence there are other undemocratic ways of acting. When Deputy Dukes was Minister for Finance, many Irish financial institutions threatened to bankrupt the country because they did not like proposals on bond washing in a Finance Bill. Is that not a deliberate use of undemocratic means to achieve a political purpose? What about the capacity or implied threat to move money out of the country if the wrong election result takes place? The Labour Party in Britain in their process of rehabilitating itself apparently feels obliged to curry favour with the City of London in order to influence 200, 300 or perhaps 1,000 people to accept their policies. In other words they accept that these 300 people could, if they wished, make it impossible for a government from the British Labour Party to function. They could move so much money out of Britain so quickly that the currency would be destabilised, interest rates would rise and the Government's future capacity for manoeuvre would be destroyed.
Are we going to tell such people that if they use power in that way they will not be entitled to participate? People of property have enormous influence as do people with wealth. Senior trade union officials may equally pretend to have enormous influence but I have the strong suspicion that if the senior trade union officials in this country were to attempt to lead their members to use power against the Government for dubious reasons, the trade union membership would give them their answer very quickly. There has been a great deal of argument and nonsense spoken about this.
If a political party meet the conditions set out in this legislation which are not unreasonable, then they should be allowed to function. However, they should not be allowed, in their political campaigning, to do anything in breach of the law, such as advocating violence to achieve political ends. To advocate the use of violence is, of course, wrong and, as a political activity, is illegal. To advocate any sort of racial hatred is also illegal under the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act. This means that parties are still bound by all the laws of this country about violence, hatred and so on. The fact that they are registered and can seek votes does not give them carte blanche to say or advocate things that are illegal. It simply gives them the right to put their views before the people.
A number of my colleagues have raised the question of the form of elections. When you read the legal definition of proportional representation in legislation like this, you begin to suspect that no more than two or three people in the country actually understand all of it. Somewhere in the Department of the Environment is an awesome figure who actually understands every possible conundrum that may arise under proportional representation. The rest of us have to trust that somebody knows. Like anybody else involved in politics, I think I understand it but on reading all the possible permutations and possibilities envisaged in the legislation, one is somewhat in awe of anyone who actually understands all of it.
The multi-seat constituency under proportional representation is beginning to outlive its usefulness. The view in politics is changing. Different kinds of people are involved. It is a much more competitive operation within parties than ever before. For many Members of the other House competition from within the party is far more threatening than competition from the other parties or from outside one's own party. If people are paralysed by a perpetual need to look over their shoulder, not at those who disagree with them about matters of policy but at other members from their own party who are liable to use their absences on Government business or Dáil business, their participation in making legislation as an excuse to undermine or to grumble about their lack of support for the constitutency, then a whole different kind of politics is developing and it is very necessary to address it.
I, for one, have no great problem with the idea of single seat constituencies using a single transferable vote. I cannot see myself taking to the barricades if there is a referendum on the issue — I will fall out with most of my friends on the left over it — but, if those of us who stand on the left in Irish politics, and that minority of us who are elected to the Dáil, do not believe we can persuade the electorate, under a single transferable vote, to vote for us, then we do not have much faith in ourselves or in the Irish electorate. Techniques of getting elected would simply change. Minority candidates in any constituency rarely have a spread of votes evenly distributed throughout the constituency. Perhaps the single seater would result in a concentration of the vote in one area.
I would not be worried if we had a referndum to replace the multi-seat constituency. I would miss election night, and the night of intense excitement as the votes are counted. Simple and straightforward elections which were counted quite quickly would spoil one of the great spectator sports this country has developed over the last 50 or 60 years. That is the only thing I would miss, and I am not sure I could object to a change in the Constitution simply because it would spoil my fun.
On the issue of emigrant votes, I do not understand why some people who are wary of it are making a fuss. Many other countries have extended voting rights to their emigrants and I have seen no evidence that it produced protest votes, destablising votes or votes for extremists — whatever they are. Many people would call me an extremist. I would be quite happy if emigrants chose to vote for the likes of me but is it rather unlikely. Like the other University Senators, I am in the unique position of having a small number of emigrants who vote for me. We have a worldwide constituency. Perhaps as the constituencies expand and as the graduates of the last ten years begin to be more active, the degree of emigrant participation will probably increase, given that a considerable proportion of more recent graduates will have left the country.
I think it is time we moved on from the debate and simply worked out how we are going to do it. There are various possible methods. Some countries attempt to make it compulsory even for emigrants to vote. I saw notices in our media during the Australians general election notifying Australians living in this country that they were obliged to turn up at the Australian Embassy on a particular day to vote. I do not think it destroyed the freedom of the citizens of Australia, nor did it undermine the stability of the Australian Government. That was influenced by events much closer to home than the voting or otherwise of emigrants.
Who is afraid of our emigrants? I am afraid of our emigrants. I have a suspicion that our emigrants, having done moderately well outside the country, will vote for a position on the political spectrum considerably different from my own. They may be influenced by the way they see other societies developing, by their own relative affluence and by lower taxation. I do not subscribe to what I regard as empirical nonsense that they leave because of high taxes. However, people are influenced by their experience.
The recent survey on Irish migrants to Britain showed no great rush by them to answer the clarion call of the Labour Party. If we were to do a scientific study of Irish emigrants in Britain and the United States, their voting intentions would be boringly similar to the voting intentions of those at home. I have heard an eminent journalist from The Irish Times, Mary Holland, say on television that she thought people did not wish to give votes to emigrants for fear they would all vote for Sinn Féin. She is a very impressive journalist, for whose writing and comments, particularly on Northern Ireland, I have enormous respect. Unless she knows something I do not know and has access to empirical information to which I do not have access, she is quite obviously wrong. I do not think giving votes to emigrants would have a significant effect on the outcome of Dáil elections.
Perhaps those who have to face the electorate in Dáil elections like to reduce the number of unknowns and the emigrants are another unknown quantity. My guess is that they will reflect the political attitudes of their parents because there is considerable evidence that most young people tend to share the political views of their parents even if they deny it for a long time. It is time we moved on from the argument of whether emigrants should have voting rights to the argument about how that can be achieved.
Some issues which were left out of this Bill should be dealt with. One hopes that in this process of opening up, the Government will deal with the question of electoral expenses. The expenditure by one particular candidate in my own constituency in the last general election was a cause of something close to scandal to many of us. The individual was not elected which indicates the delightful view that you cannot buy people's votes. There were suggestions that another candidate, who was a Member of this House, spent a multiple of £100,000 on an election, or the equivalent in cash and in kind. I do not know if that is true, but we could start by requiring that the total expenditure by individuals and their parties on electioneering be made public. We can work from that to whether we should put a limit on expenditure and whether we should find it. It would be healthy to start by insisting that we should all know precisely how much is spent on behalf of individuals, and the per capita expenditure of each candidate, including that spent by party headquarters, where the individual has a party. It would mean separate accounting and clear definitions of what constituted election expenses.
It is a pity that issue is not addressed. There is a strong sense of unease around the country about it. We are aware that some political parties are having difficulty with the request from the tribunal of inquiry into the beef industry for information about contributions. All of us, including the recipients of the contributions, would be much better off if such contributions and election expenditure were accounted for publicly. Whatever influence people may think they get from making contributions, I genuinely doubt if, in most cases it has much effect because I have a reasonable respect for almost all my colleagues in both Houses of the Oireachtas. Those who think they have a special line of communication would be far less likely to believe it if their contributions and how their money was used became public.
I accept that this is largely consolidating legislation, but there are stings in its tail suggesting that perhaps some other issues could have been included also. It is a pity this matter was not addressed.
I am glad that the requirement that special voters have to prove they are of sound mind is being removed. It is a reproach to us all. I was here when the original legislation and the statutory instrument to make this possible went through. None of us really noticed or took exception to it. It is a classic case of the ease with which one forgets that the presence of one handicap does not necessarily mean another handicap exists. It was a mistake, it was wrong, it was grossly offensive and I am glad it is gone. It is a pity that, in spite of that step forward, there is still offensive language in the Bill. Section 41 uses the appalling word "imbecile." It is time we found a new vocabulary. I know the word has a legal meaning, but it really is time the law caught up with the rest of us, found new ways of describing people and rid itself of language that is so profoundly offensive.
On a less serious note, it ought to have been possible to use the words, "Ceann Comhairle of the Dáil" instead of "Chairman of the Dáil" in the legislation. I appreciate the constitutional position but the words "Ceann Comhairle" are in the Constitution. It would have been perfectly possible to say that the Ceann Comhairle meant the Chairman of the Dáil as described in the Constitution. I find it funny to use a term for the Ceann Comhairle which was never used in the Dáil. In any event, the word "Chairman" is increasingly antiquated and we should get rid of it. It is a profoundly sexist word; it causes offence to many people, and not just women. Since we have an appropriate non-sexist term available to us in the Dáil, it should have been used. I regret that the changes taking place all around us in the use of language have not been reflected in this Bill.
When schools and other public buildings are used for electoral purposes, is there public liability insurance, in the event of an accident? If so, who pays for it? This problem worries school boards of management and those who are responsible for running schools. I would like specific clarification of this matter. Who is responsible?
Some Senators referred somewhat distastefully to compulsory voting. I believe compulsory voting is a very good thing. There are many things we do not allow people to opt out of because we believe they are in the common good. We do not allow people to opt out of education, for instance, nor do we allow them to opt out of marriages, because we believe it is in the common good. Logically we should not allow people to opt out of the fundamental exercise of democracy, which is voting. They can spoil their vote if they wish but we should not allow people to refuse to vote without a good reason. I am in favour of compulsory voting.
I am also in favour of Sunday voting. There is much to be said for having Sunday as the day on which our elections take place. Do not let me hear a lecture about the sanctity of the Sabbath because we do many things on the Sabbath — some of which should not, perhaps, be mentioned here. Most of our shops open on Sundays coming up to Christmas to the detriment, I suspect, of the family lives of many workers in shops. We have horse races and football matches, on Sundays, and I have no reason to believe we could not just as successfully have elections on Sundays. I think Senator Ryan is saying that elections are like a blood sport, and that may be the best argument against having them on Sunday. Some of our European neighbours have Sunday voting and it seems to work fairly well.
Section 103 of the Bill deals with voting by blind, incapacitated and illiterate electors and I want to add very little to that. Senator Dardis made a valid point about the requirement of the companion of such a voter to show that they have not been a companion to more than one person. Why is there no similar provision in the Seanad panel elections for the 43 seats occupied by the majority of Members of this House? A voter on the Seanad panels who is blind cannot vote. There is no provision in the Seanad Electoral Act for people who are blind. Recently in Cork we had a Lord Mayor who was blind. We had at one stage, to my knowledge, a member of the corporation who was illiterate. I do not know how many more members of local authorities have similar physical handicaps, particularly blindness, which affect many people. It is a small omission, which could easily be remedied. It deserves to be remedied, not necessarily that it would make an overwhelming difference to the outcome of the election but because somebody who has a physical handicap and still has the spirit to get involved and participate in electoral politics should not be disqualified from one of the small privileges and powers that go with that. Therefore, I ask the Minister and the Government, even at this stage in this Bill, to insert into section 103 a provision that it would also apply to the Seanad panel elections. It would be a most welcome, although not enormously important, step forward.
Parts of the Bill are almost entertaining. Section 139 refers to "disorderly conduct at an election meeting". There is a delightful air of almost venerable irrelevance about this. Election meetings are almost a thing of the past. If "Today Tonight" run a special programme in which they have a large audience and the audience gets rowdy, as often happens during elections, are the people in the audience guilty of disorderly conduct at an election meeting? I may have missed the definition of an election meeting but that is the form our election meetings now take. If people are watching such a programme on television in a pub and a row breaks out, are they guilty, in addition to the row, of disorderly conduct at an election meeting? This phrase goes back to the days of mass rallies in the town square with flags and buntings and de Valera arriving to huge noise and perhaps some protests, although the protests were usually very quiet in the part of the country I came from. The section may be necessary but it has little to do with the reality of modern politics.
On the prohibition of canvassing near polling booths, my view is that 50 metres is not far enough. I would be quite happy to make the limit 200 metres. Having been through it on a few occasions, including the Presidential elections, I am convinced that such canvassing is an enormous irritant to the vast majority of electors. A succession of people stuff large amounts of waste paper into their hands and all the unfortunate elector wants to do is to dispose of it at the first appropriate opportunity in the nearest bin. Most of them, being good citizens, do not want to be seen dumping it on the ground, so they hold on to it and often have to bring it home. They never read it. If they are so unsure or so illiterate that they have to have imitation ballot papers then they will probably be unable to vote anyway and will need assistance.
This provision regarding the 50 metres is well overdue. In a few years time we will wonder how we ever put up with the present position and how every political party in this State managed to consume so many human resources. So many election workers stand outside polling stations, sometimes in the middle of winter, freezing to death, and they influence nobody.
Section 168 extends the provisions of many sections of this Bill to the election of University Senators — the six of us who grace these benches, who contribute so much to the workings to this House and add so much to its dignity. That is all for Senator McGowan's benefit and if someone would pass it on I would be grateful. Senator Farrell might also be interested.
Section 57 is now to apply to the University seats. That section makes reference to "candidates of the same political party". One of the little niceties we observe in the Seanad is that there are no political parties in Seanad elections which is why there are no party affiliations on the long ballot paper for a Seanad panel election. Similarly, in the University elections for both constituencies, there are no party affiliations. Does this mean that hidden Fianna Fáil members, hidden Fine Gael members and hidden members of the Labour Party will have to declare their allegiances and run together? If, on the other hand, they declare their allegiances afterwards, will they not be in breach of the law, being candidates of the same political party and not saying so. Perhaps section 57, as it applies to University constituencies, should be amended to remove the reference to parties.
Similarly there is a provision in relation to individuals or candidates who run in more than one constituency which applies to the Dáil and which will be applicable to the Seanad. I have a distinct recollection of a man with the unforgettable name of William Abbey of the Holy Cross running in two constituencies and having free postage in both constituencies. Perhaps the previous provision was not used. Perhaps the provision for free postage for one constituency is not new. The provision relating to parties is a red herring and it should be dealt with.
During the Presidential campaign I met people who had voted in the previous election, who had not moved house and who discovered they had been removed from the register. When that happens to people, they are entitled to know from the local authority how exactly they came to be removed. For instance, who told the local authority they were no longer living there? Who passed on information which suggested this? If I tell the local authority that a certain house is now empty, then the local authority should keep a record of that. If the person in that house, having done nothing except vote, discovers they are no longer on the register, they should be able to find out who said they were no longer there and, if necessary, initiate legal action against the individual involved.
It should be possible at this stage, using modern information technology, to begin to correlate property with voters. In other words, if there is, as there should be, a properly computerised register of all housing in Cork city, then it should be possible to correlate that with the electorate and find out if there are houses which the local authority believe to be in use as accommodation but in respect of which no electors are registered. Presumably since we get our service charge bills somebody knows the name and address of every single unit of housing accommodation in every constituency. If you know the name and address of every unit, and it is usually computerised, it should not be too difficult to do a cross-check between the units of housing accommodation and at least find those houses where nobody is on the register. Somebody could then visit those houses and check the matter. In flatland many landlords do their best to discourage people from registering because there is nothing more enticing to the Revenue Commissioners than an electoral register for Rathmines which shows multiple occupancy of half the houses there. That is a reasonable good start to finding out who is the landlord and whether he has been paying his taxes.
In the Bill there is provision for extra central Government support for the preparation of registers. The National University of Ireland is landed with the impossible task of trying to compile a register which, when I started, had 20,000 people on it and which now would probably have 80,000 people on it. As far as I understand, they have to do that on a diminished budget. They are even caught with the ridiculous requirement that they cannot sell a copy of the register for more than 50p, so that you have these two enormous tomes, which probably cost £10 to produce, being sold for 50p. This is unashamedly a special pleading for financial assistance. If we are going to have University seats then we ought to make some decent effort to make sure the register from which those people are elected is up to date, efficiently put together and properly prepared. That costs money. It is a bit much to expect a small body like the NUI to do it all on their own.
I want to talk also about section 167. I do not know where it came from; I cannot for the life of me imagine who thought this was a good idea. The then Minister — it is hard to keep track at this stage — said that "opinion polls in the days immediately preceding an election referendum can have consequences detrimental to the genuine expression of the democratic will of the people." I am always fascinated when people get worried that the people will be upset or that the people will be confused. My view of the people is that they are extraordinarily incapable of being confused, that their heads are very clear during elections. On the unrelated issue of the deposits, the relevant comment in the explanatory memorandum says: The purpose of a deposit is to discourage frivolous candidates, whose intervention can cause confusion to electors." I do not think candidates confuse electors. I do not think people get confused. I think people are very clear about whom they want to vote for; and, even if there were 200 candidates, you would find that 95 per cent or 98 per cent of the electorate would end up voting for the candidate of their choice.
The Minister said: "Since the publication of the Bill there has been a significant change in the perception of opinion polls". This is fascinating. Usually you would at least get a source for a sweeping generalisation like that. Unfortunately, he did not give it, but maybe the Minister for the Environment, or his successor, could tell us where this significant change in the perception of opinion polls is and how come I never heard about it. I read the newspapers. I am reasonably literate, reasonably numerate and nobody has yet told me about this significant change in the perception of opinion polls. He said: "Originally the view was fairly widely held that opinion polls are neutral in effect and simply offer a snapshot of opinion at a given moment". It is now generally recognised that polls have a significant effect on the manner in which electors vote and this was confirmed by a poll published last June.
There is something peculiarly ironic about banning polls on the basis of information got from a poll. Polls can and do have a bandwagon effect. So do many other things. The promise to abolish rates produced a bandwagon effect in 1973 which almost scuppered the Cosgrave coalition in that election. The Ministry went on: "They provide the necessary information for tactical voting and vote management". What is wrong with people voting in the way they think is most effective and gives their vote the most weight? What is wrong with vote management? People have been doing it for generations.
I am disappointed particularly with the party in front of me here who have fudged their position consistently on whether they are for or against this, who talk about being interested in a particular point of view. Senator Doyle said she was interested in Senator Murphy's view that it might be unconstitutional. They have more lawyers per square foot in that party than any other party in the State. Could they please make up their minds as to whether they think this is unconstitutional instead of relying on an undoubtedly eminent historian from UCC to tell them whether or not it is unconstitutional? I have heard a succession of them and they cannot make up their minds. Why can they not make up their minds? Is it because they think they might be able to squeeze the Labour Party if they could abolish opinion polls, because they can afford to take them and the Labour Party cannot? I do not know.
I think it is unconstitutional, not because any lawyer told me but because I believe our citizens have a right to assemble information about anything at any time unless there is major grounds of public order to prevent it. We have a considerably broadly based, deeply ingrained constitutional right to publish what we like in this country unless it is in breach of public order and morality. I do not believe any court in this land will accept that publishing opinion polls is in breach of public order or morality.
I do not know where the provision came from and I have no idea what it is for. The Minister's language is redolent of Mrs. Thatcher when he talks about the individual making an individual decision, as if the idea of society making decisions is somehow unacceptable — this, of course, reminds one of Mrs. Thatcher's famous phrase that there is no such thing as society. Why should people have to make election decisions in isolation? I do not understand why it is better if they make decisions in isolation. Why should it be important if opinion polls influence elections? Many things influence people's choices — the colour of a person's hair, whether they are young and good looking, apparently whether a person's name is at the beginning of the alphabet. How much money somebody can spend on an election affects how people vote, whether one's sense of humour comes across well on television — a whole list of things. Richard Nixon's unfortunate inability to keep his chin looking clean shaven apparently had an effect. The wonderful thing about democracy is that in spite of all of those things people usually make good decisions, because all these strange things compensate — and I say this as one who has been disappointed with most of the decisions made by the Irish people in my lifetime in terms of elections, with the glorious exception of the last Presidential election.
I do not know what is behind this, but I ask a question. An opinion poll is defined in the Bill as:
a systematic inquiry conducted by means of questioning a sample of persons considered to be representative of the population of the State or any part thereof for the purpose of ascertaining the likely opinions of the population of the State as a whole or part thereof on matter relating to any election.
Can anybody explain to me how that does not cover canvassing and canvassing returns being assembled in party headquarters as you go from door to door?
If I know anything about canvassing, and I did a bit of it in my time, the most important information that comes back from the canvas is how people are voting. I know that Fianna Fail during the 1989 election knew within two days of the election being called that the health services were a huge issue because they had got canvas returns door-to-door which told them so. That was nothing else but "a systematic inquiry conducted by means of questioning a sample of persons". That sample was enormous. It might have been 20 per cent of the electorate in the first week, but it was by any stretch of the imagination a systematic inquiry conducted on a sample of persons. Therefore, it is illegal. It would be interesting to hear somebody on the Government side explain to me how one can go along, assemble that information, collate it, send it back to party headquarters to get a national picture of what people are thinking about and say it is not an opinion poll. It is a more extensive opinion poll, it is as real an opinion poll as one conducted with a sample, and it is probably more correct because it is a larger sample and there the margin of error goes down.
Section 167 is not open to amendment; it is not open to change. There is only one thing to do with the section and that is to take it out of the Bill in total. Because a certain party did not like the message it was getting from opinion polls it did a classic thing when you do not like the message: it went about shooting the messenger. I think we can do without it.
The Bill contains a couple of clauses that merit questioning. Section 25, on the registration of political parties, says that the registrar of parties must not register a party unless it is a genuine political party. I thought Fianna Fail were not a political party. They keep telling me they are a national movement; therefore, they are not a genuine political party and they should not be registered as such. Maybe they should be deregistered.
The Senator has a good point.
As soon as this Bill is passed and becomes an Act I shall raise the matter with the Clerk of the Dáil as to whether Fianna Fáil, since they assert vigorously and publicly that they are not a genuine political party but a national movement, should actually be deregistered and you can all run as non-party candidates the next time.
The final point that intrigues me — I probably should not say this — is the prohibition on bribery. It says that "a person shall not, in relation to a Dail election give valuable consideration to induce a voter to vote in a particular way" and "valuable consideration", it tells us, "includes the giving, lending or agreeing to give or lend, or the offer or promise to procure or to attempt to procure any money, money's worth or valuable security or any valuable consideration or any office, place or employment to or for any person." If that is what it sounds like, I think most of our electoral manifestoes are clearly and unequivocably exercises in bribery, because they quite clearly offer valuable consideration to people on the basis of how they vote.
I would like to welcome the Minister to the Seanad and to wish him well in his new job. I have no doubt he will do an excellent job in Science and Technology.
I would like to welcome the Bill. This is really tidying up about 14 different pieces of legislation and putting them into one single Bill. I welcome it for the very reasons Senator Murphy gave. He said:
I am in favour of any legislation which will improve the electoral process and help people to vote in an informed way at referenda as well as general elections. The whole purpose of politics should be to encourage maximum participation especially at a time of intense cynicism about politics and politicians.
I do not think I could put it any better and for that reason I welcome this Bill. I believe it makes it simpler for people to understand the whole process.
I welcome the change in the way we are drafting the register because this is an area which has caused a huge amount of confusion. I agree with what Senator Conroy said earlier, that with computers it should be possible for us to even move further than the Bill; in fact, it should be very easy for us within two weeks to put somebody on the register of electors. I would be critical of the Bill in the sense that I do not think it goes far enough in that area. I believe that work of the local authority of which I am a member, Dublin Corporation is very good, but there still is confusion among people about why they were removed from the register.
Senator Ryan asked why people are removed from the register. Recently I checked the register in my own neighbourhood and I noticed 47 people had been removed from the draft register. I rang up the local authority and inquired the reason and, in fairness to them, I have to say I was amazed at how thorough they were in finding out who was living in a house and who was not. They called to the House during the day. They had asked me for two examples of people who had been removed from the register and I gave them two examples. They explained to me that local authority officials had called on the people concerned on a certain date and at a certain time, that nobody was at home and that a leaflet had been left to tell them the corporation officials had called. This was repeated later in the evening and, again, a leaflet was left. These people were then removed from the draft register. They said they encouraged people to check the draft register to make sure they were on it, but people did not do that. If people have been on the previous full register, they are then put back on the register and the following year the same process is gone through. If they do not respond then, they are removed from the register. After going through the entire process the local authority at that stage are satisfied that the person or persons concerned no longer live in the house. In fairness to Dublin Corporation, it is very thorough; but, unfortunately, what most people would say is that so much written material is put through their door every day or week that they take very little notice of it. I think that is the problem. I believe this Bill could go further in making sure that people are put on the register in a much shorter period of time.
I welcome the change in the timescale. I could never understand why this was done over the Christmas period when people are obviously very busy with other things. I am delighted that has been changed because it was not logical; in fact, if you wanted to go out of your way to get somebody off the register you could not have picked a better time. When people apply for planning permission they always put it in around Christmas when they hope people are preoccupied with other things.
With regard to the registration of one address, in my own constituency of Dublin South East we have a very transient population and we have a very low poll at election time, one of the lowest polls in the country. The reason is that we have many people who live in flats and we have a huge number of students. I am delighted the students will have to pick one address, either in the city or in the country, at which to vote. When candidates are canvassing them they have not made up their minds themselves and on polling day very often they do not vote at all. The change proposed in this Bill will make them decide where they want to vote. If they want to go to their home in the country to vote they will make arguments to do it and if they want to vote in Dublin they will obviously make sure they are on the register here. That is very important.
I also welcome the increase in the deposit to £500. As has already been said, it was £100 in 1923 and the equivalent now would be much higher than £500. Senator Naughten gave a very good example of somebody in his own constituency with the same name as the sitting TD who ran and the sitting TD actually lost his seat because of that. If something like this happened to them many of the people who have complained about this being undemocratic would be the first to scream from the rooftops about how they had been done out of their seat. It stops frivolous candidates going forward. It is not an enormous sum of money. In very many countries you have to get a large list of people to support you before you can run for election. If somebody wanted to run on an unemployment ticket or any other ticket, they could, I believe, do so if they made the effort. People running for political parties and Independents have to put a lot of work into it before the election. If these people put that amount of work into it, they could come up with £500 if there was genuine interest and support for them within the constituency in which they wanted to run.
The change in regard to canvassing outside polling stations must be welcomed by everybody. It is one of the craziest things politicians do. The problem is that once one person does it we all have to do it. Ringsend polling station between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. on polling day has to be seen to be believed. How will candidates who have a box on the top of their cars bring voters to polling stations if they are not allowed within 50 yards of the polling station, especially if the people are elderly and they have to leave them 50 yards from the polling station? I am not too sure how that will work in practice. It could be difficult, but if it is very strictly enforced the people will have no choice.
One speaker mentioned megaphones, very loud, sophisticated ones. They are a complete waste of time. Practically nobody changes their mind going into a polling station. I have never seen anybody change their mind, unless if they meet the candidate. If they are going to vote for a party and they meet the candidate they might give him or her a number one as opposed to a number two or three. That may happen on a very rare occasion. Overall this change is welcome and the people will be happy with it.
I am in two minds about banning opinion polls, but if we are going to ban them we must ban all opinion polls; for instance, I do not believe you can have a phone-in on the radio because it can be very easily rigged. We have all been asked to phone up such and such a number to support X, Y or Z. It is not a scientific exercise and it could be completely inaccurate. People who discussed banning opinion polls before an election felt they could have a snowball effect if they showed that a certain party or individual was winning, because everybody likes to back a winner. As I said, I am in two minds about the idea of banning opinion polls. I am a great believer in opinion polls. They can be very accurate and helpful to politicians.
I wonder why Sunday voting is not included in the Bill. Has it ever been studied? Would more people vote on a Sunday? If they would, the idea of Sunday voting should be looked at. In Dublin it would suit many people. Many countries have Sunday voting and I am sorry there is no mention of it in the Bill.
I am disappointed about the names appearing in alphabetical order. The Minister present would probably disagree with me, but the last Minister with us, Deputy Wallace, would agree with me. The Minister for the Environment, Deputy Smith would also agree. It has been proven that anybody on the top of the ballot paper can have an advantage of up to 500 or 700 votes. Since my name begins with R, that is a disadvantage. It is also a disadvantage to Deputy Smith and Deputy Wallace, but not to the Minister present, Deputy M. Ahern. I am sorry that this issue has not been looked at. It would be much fairer if everybody's name was drawn by lottery. The names would be put down on the ballot paper in that order and it would give everybody a fairer chance. I hope the Minister, Deputy Smith, will consider such an amendment.
I am in two minds about giving votes to emigrants. Senator B. Ryan said he loved the idea of proportional representation, the fun of the last count on the night and the great excitement in our political system. It is unique, we all love it. It is a wonderful spectator sport and, even when you are directly involved, in it, it is fantastic. The argument against emigrant voting for the Dáil is that the emigrants could have a very significant effect on the last seats in four or five seat constituencies. That is why many people object to it; they do not think the emigrants have enough current knowledge of what is happening in the country. However, I could be wrong about that. I believe emigrants should have some kind of representation — perhaps in the Seanad — to voice their opinions and make sure we do not forget the great tragedy of emigration.
I agree with the proposal that people over 18 should be eligible to be Members of the Dáil and Seanad. I cannot understand why people over 18 cannot be Members of the Oireachtas. They are expected to do everything else; it has been said that people mature more quickly today than they did in the past. In many ways votes for emigrants would be a good thing, but it has not been included in the Bill.
I welcome the Bill. It is long overdue and will clear up many of the problems and much of the confusion in the voting system which exist at present. This is good legislation and I welcome it.
First, I welcome the Minister to the House, congratulate him on his appointment and wish him well in his new post. I am sure he will work just as diligently as he has in his constituency over the years.
I welcome the Bill. It is replacing a large number of Acts — 14 pieces of legislation, I believe — and this should help to tidy up matters considerably. It deals exclusively with the Dáil; it has nothing to say about elections to Seanad or to the European Parliament, and that is a pity.
There are a number of points I would like to comment on, but I do not propose to detain the House very long. With regard to the deposit being increased from £100 to £500, it is true that that is not even keeping pace with inflation; but it has to be said that £500 might represent a lot of money for a serious candidate who is unemployed, for instance, and it might be better to look at it another way. If we could reduce the quota of votes required before a person would lose the deposit it might cater for people who are in straitened circumstances and who are not frivolous candidates. Perhaps that should be looked at.
With regard to the registration of voters up to the day the election is called, I think that is not adequate. In my experience of canvassing, most of the people who are not on the register find out that fact when they are being canvassed, but at that point they can do nothing about it. With modern technology it ought to be possible to shorten the period to about a week at most. It is unfortunate that this problem has not been tackled before because the method proposed now is not adequate.
The removal of the certification of being of sound mind was long overdue. It was offensive legislation and I warmly welcome its removal. Several speakers mentioned the names of candidates being in alphabetical order. Senator Ryan referred to how disadvantaged a person is with a name beginning with "R" and how advantaged the Minister, Deputy Ahern, was by having a name beginning with "A." Admittedly, there is some evidence to support that but if candidates' names are not to be in strict alphabetical order, perhaps they should be selected at random. It is a minor point but if one has a name beginning with "R" one might feel a little aggrieved about it.
Compulsory voting has been mentioned and there is a lot to be said for it. Countries as far away as Australia and as near as Belgium have compulsory voting. People are fined if they do not perform their civic duty to vote. That issue should be examined because this is a very important duty. A number of people are willing and ready to criticise politicians but they are not prepared to play any part in selecting who should be their representatives. I heard one cynic saying not to vote for them, because "it only encourages them". That is not good enough. We should look at the idea of compulsory voting if not in this Bill, then in future legislation.
Sunday voting was also mentioned. This is common in many European countries. It would result in an increased poll because for many people it is not as easy for them to vote on a weekday or a work day as it would be on a Sunday. I do not see what objection people can have to it on moral or other grounds. The church talks about unnecessary servile work on Sunday, but to perform one's duty by voting is very necessary work.
With regard to registration of political parties, the view has been expressed on both sides of the House that parties who support violence or refuse to condemn violence should not be registered. I have sympathy with that point of view but one could take the opposite view, that is, that perhaps the best answer to give to parties who support violence is the answer Sinn Féin have been getting consistently at the ballot box. If they are not allowed to stand or participate in the elections they could claim — and we could not deny it — that they had big support, but put them before the electorate and they will get the answer they deserve. That is the best possible answer. The electorate have consistently rejected Sinn Féin. I do not think we would gain a lot by not allowing them to register as a political party.
The issue of the emigrant vote has come up again and again. Senator Murphy said that there should be no representation without taxation, in other words, people who are not paying their taxes in this country should not have a right to representation. I do not completely go along with that point of view. People had to emigrate. They were denied a chance to work in this country because we mismanaged our economy. I do not think they should be disenfranchised as well, thereby denying them any part in changing the system that failed us. I agree that people who are out of the country for a very long time would not know the current situation very well, but what about people who left Ireland say, up to five years ago? People have asked how such voting could be organised. All I can say is that many countries organise such votes very successfully. Take the United States for instance. Consider the number of US citizens living overseas, serving in the forces, in embassies, employed commerce and so on. If the US can organise it, it should not be very difficult for us to do so, if we have the will.
The strangest suggestion of all is limiting opinion polls. The Bill states:
"Opinion poll" means a systematic inquiry conducted by means of questioning a sample of persons considered to be representative of the population of the State or any part thereof for the purpose of ascertaining the likely opinions of the population of the State as a whole or part thereof on matters relating to any election or referendum including the manner in which the population of the State or part thereof may vote in such election or referendum.
That definition is fine but what worries me is the fact that there is a proposal to ban polls within the seven days immediately preceding polling day. If the legislation is not adhered to one can be fined up to £10,000 on conviction. I do not understand the logic of this. I do not think there is any evidence to suggest that a poll will significantly change how the electorate will vote, with perhaps one exception.
If there were a number of time zones in a country such as in Russia or in the United States, one could have exit polls in one area long before people in another part of the country would vote. In that case, it may not be helpful although it is a fact that in the recent Russian election, opinion polls played a significant part. The Russian people seemed to appreciate the polls very much.
It is also significant that countries as different as Belgium and Turkey recently declared that barring polls was unconstitutional. I do not know why we are going in the other direction when we have no evidence of any significance to say that polls had in any way damaged the election process. I would like to see that subsection removed from the Bill.
With regard to eligibility to stand for election, the Bill states one must be a citizen of the State. This country has signed the Maastricht Agreement. In that agreement there is a proposal for European citizenship. That implies that a citizen of the Community will have the right to vote or stand for election in any country of the Community. Are we at one and the same time approving the Maastricht agreement while saying that only citizens of this country can stand for election in this country? That seems to be contradictory and we should have an amendment to change that.
I am delighted to see some effort has been made to reduce or prohibit the harassment of the electorate at polling stations by suggesting that there should be no canvassing within 50 metres of the polling station. I do not think 50 metres is adequate. It is a sickening sight to see literature being stuffed at the electorate which they do not want and which will not change their opinions anyway. As somebody said, if one party does it, all parties will have to do it. I would love to see the day when people can come, without being harassed, to cast their vote in peace and comfort and those who have to stand all day in the cold and the rain outside polling stations could go away and do something else.
Ar dtús, ba mhaith liom fáilte a chur roimh an Aire Stáit go dtí an Teach seo agus comhghairdeas a dhéanamh leis as ucht a thofa mar Aire.
This is a timely and important Bill of considerable magnitude. There are 160 sections in it. I welcome the provisions regarding the registration of electors. As the system operates at the moment, somebody who is not put on the list by the revision court which is held generally at this time of the year is disenfranchised basically from the following April to the April after that. In many cases failure to be registered at a revision court now disenfranchises a person up to 14 months from that date. This is totally unsatisfactory. Many people only check the register when an election is about to be called. I see it as major progress that people will now be able to register up until the date an election is called.
We all know of cases when we are doing our canvas where people ask if they are on the electoral register. There is an argument in favour of people being allowed to register up to the day of polling. However, this would pose massive administrative problems and would not allow people to appeal against registration in cases where that registration was not valid. The provision in the Bill is a practical step which will give everybody a reasonable chance to get their name on the register. What we are talking about here is not the day the election will be called but the day the Minister fixes as polling day. That is a major reform which I welcome.
As regards the registration of electors, it is important to refer to the issue of emigrant votes and voting areas which are referred to in section 2(1) of the Bill. I would like to address the issue of the right to vote in areas other than the area where a person resides. There are many young single people working in the city who every weekend take buses home to Sligo, Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, Kerry, Cork, etc. They should have the option either of registering in their home place or in their place of work. I accept totally that they should not be allowed to register in both places but where people feel they have more in common with their home place they should have a right to register there particularly when they do not have a permanent residence in the area where they work.
We must look at the pattern and definition of emigration. In the old days somebody who went to America or England was gone for good but people nowadays are much more mobile. One massive problem we faced is where people who went to work in America or England for a year or two and then came back were not back in time to register and were disenfranchised for 18 months on their return. That matter is addressed now because they can register up to the day of polling. We also have a large number of people who, although living abroad, spend some months every year in their native place. We should consider the possibility of an emigrant being allowed to register in their home place for five years after leaving. This would cover the situation where they came home or were home at the time of an election.
The case has been made that there should be no representation without taxation. I do not know whether it means income tax, VAT or other types of tax. If we are talking about income tax, taken to its logical conclusion that would mean some people would propose to disenfranchise social welfare recipients. Of course, I appreciate that was not meant. Many emigrants who have done well abroad make significant contributions, including tax contributions, to their communities by way of repatriation of money. While a decision on that issue should not be rushed, it is a matter worthy of serioius consideration.
There is a feeling that if emigrants had a vote it would radically alter the pattern of voting within constituencies. I do not think that is true. I think the pattern of emigrant voting would be very similar to that which exists already but, that said, this issue would need to be treated with very great care. Potential problems would need to be examined. In other countries where they have votes for people who are non-resident, there are limits to the number of such people who can vote in any constituency so that the voting pattern is balanced.
Regarding special voters, there is very little to be said except to welcome the sections involved. For old people, the privilege and the right to vote at home has been a great boon. The necessity to register early every year caused great difficulty. The need to get a doctor's certificate every year and to be certified as being of sound mind was unnecessary. I welcome this provision. I also welcome the provision that once one is registered as a special voter of a certain age, automatically one would not have to register again.
There has been a great deal of debate about deposits. People made great play of the fact that somebody might not be able to come up with £500. My understanding of the raison d'être of the deposit was to ensure that people had a serious intention of standing in an election when they let their names go forward as a candidate. I also understand that the £100 deposit was introduced some time back in the twenties. Taking the rate of inflation into account the equivalent figure today would be far in excess of £500.
As a candidate who stood in several elections with very meagre resources, my feeling is that a candidate who, with his backers, could not raise a £500 deposit would not have a chance of being elected. As somebody who believes in co-operation, most candidates stand backed by a team of some sort. There was a scheme that nearly came off in an election to a certain authority where the deposit was £10. For purely obstructive purposes, a group of 160 people were very close to putting their 160 names on the ballot paper. That type of thing makes a mockery of democracy and elections. It must also be noted that the deposit will be refunded if one gets one-quarter of a quota. In other words, if the quota is 800 votes, any candidate who, on his last count, received over 200 votes would get their deposit back. It is unrealistic to say that raising the deposit to £500 will stop anybody with serious intent from standing in an election.
I welcome the proposals to stop interference outside polling booths. There is nothing more anti-democratic than to have a babble of people outside a polling booth, hassling you, and putting literature into your hand when you are going in to vote. People have a democratic right to go into a polling booth without hassle and interference. My view is that all the canvassing and persuading that used to go on outside polling booths did not affect a significant percentage of the electorate. Citizens' rights will be protected now that we have built into this Bill power to deal with obstruction of electors outside polling booths.
I welcome section 92 which deals with polling information cards. This is very important because people thought that if they did not get a polling card they could not vote.
I have no objection to Sunday voting but before we rush into it we must take into account the feelings of the majority churches who might have an objection to that practice. If there are people who, for religious reasons, find Sunday voting objectionable — I understand that, in this case, the Catholic Church does not have an objection — their feelings would have to be taken into account. If any section of the people were to be disenfranchised because of firmly held religious beliefs we would be very foolish to introduce such a scheme.
There are many rural areas where there were traditionally some very small polling booths. In most cases, polling booths which were in private houses have now been moved to public places like schools, etc. However, the habit has persisted of putting separate boxes into these polling booths. There are cases where three boxes have been put in polling stations, and one box may have as few as 20 ballot papers. When the numbers are that small, the secrecy of the ballot may not be maintained; if there are 20 electors and 16 vote, it does not take too much imagination, particularly in rural areas, to make a fair stab at the way people voted. In the case of a remote community where there is only a small population, there is no way of avoiding that problem. Where the boxes have been brought into a central location, the system should be revised and all the votes should be put into one box to ensure that, by sheer numbers, the secrecy of the ballot is maintained. It is a fundamental right that, when the tally is completed, nobody should be able to give a reasonable guess at the way any individual voted. I accept the need for tallying and scrutinising of voting but where there are two boxes in a row and 30 votes are in one box and 250 in another, it would be better to put the 280 votes in one box or 140 votes in each box to ensure that the secrecy of the ballot is maintained.
Another issue that must be addressed in the future is the listing of names on the ballot paper. I am in the peculiar situation that I fought three elections under the name Ó Cuív which I lost, and I fought two elections under the name Cuív, Éamon Ó which I won. Whether there is any connection between the two, God only knows but it is a matter of public record. I was accused of changing my name and doing a very un-Irish like action. I would like to put on the record what actually happened.
I contended to the county council that names in the Irish language should be indexed — remember a ballot paper is in index — under the surname proper. I also maintained that the electoral register should be registered in the same way. The county council insisted that I should be registered under Ó Cuív, which is under "O", and that my wife would be registered under Uí Cuív, which would be under "U". We would be in two different places on the electoral register. That defied logic. I fought this case in the Circuit Court without any legal help. It was fought on the basis that, according to the Oxford Dictionary, a surname is the name common to all members of a family, and it was patently obvious that the name Ó Cuív was not common to the members of my household since I was Ó Cuív, my wife was Uí Chuív, and my daughter was Ní Chuív and, therefore, the only common bond between us, surname-wise, was the name of "Cuív." Furthermore it is a matter of common knowledge in the Gaeltacht that if, for example, you are referring to a person or a property you would say Tigh Chuív or Tigh Mhóráin; you would not say Tigh Ó Cuív or Tigh Ó Móráin. It was of great satisfaction to me that the judge agreed that the indexing of names in the Irish language should be done under the surname proper. MacMathúna would be entered under Mathúna, Ó Cuív would be entered under "C". It is also of interest that the Department of Education have issued those regulations to primary schools since the foundation of the State and if one looks at the rolls in primary schools there is an instruction there to index all the names under the surname proper without the prefix.
For those who might use the telephone directory to knock that particular argument, it is of note that Telecom Éireann state that the prefix to a surname shall be treated as if it were part of the surname proper; they admit that the prefix is not part of the surname proper but that they treat it as such. Despite public comment claiming that I have dropped the "O" from my name, that is not true; what I said was that I should be indexed under "C", that my name is Éamon Ó Cuív, and my other names are "Éamon" and "O" and that is the way I appear on the ballot paper.
Having experienced the two ways it appears to me that it is an inherent disadvantage to be down the alphabet in an election. Everybody recognises it. Any independent survey of the names of Members of the Oireachtas recognises that somebody with a name like Wallace is at a disadvantage to somebody called Ahern. This matter should be addressed; it would be quite reasonable to put all the names in a hat and to pull them out on a random basis. People would say that they had difficulty locating people on the ballot paper in that way but I do not agree. People find out who they want on a ballot paper. In an election where one was asked to vote for one candidate only, it would not make a significant difference, but it makes a difference with our system of preferences. After people put in their number one, two and three, they tend to fill in their party candidates starting from the top down as the simpliest way of locating them. This should be given serious consideration although it will not affect me significantly in the future.
Finally, I think, not for this Bill but for the future, we must once again look at the nature of our voting system. I recognise that it is representative and that it gives seats in proportion to the number of votes cast as accurately as possible, but I also recognise the problems it causes, duplication of work and of representation and without rushing fences it should be evaluated.
In larger usually five seat constituencies, one may go to a meeting and encounter five, six, maybe seven Oireachtas Members, five county concillors, all from the one area and all concerned about a problem on which everybody is in agreement. Twelve representations are made to whatever authority is concerned; 12 answers are sent back to those 12 people all giving the same information. That issue should be addressed and we also need to look at intra-party rivalries that arise from such a system and the consequential emphasis on constituency work. I consider such work important but we need a better balance between constituency work and the other work of a public representative. This becomes a critical matter for Ministers who have to devote considerable part of their time to affairs of State and also to maintaining their position within our electoral system.
I do not know what the final answer might be. I often think there is merit in the PR system with single seat constituencies. I do not know if that is the answer but the question should be open to future debate concerning the nature of representation and of Government and how we might provide a system that is democratic on the one hand but also ensures that the Government get on with the job of providing for the people in every way. This is a very important Bill.
Is dóigh liom go bhfuil dul chun cinn mór á dhéanamh maidir leis an dlí a bhaineann le cúrsaí toghcháin. Bhí gá leis na hathruithe seo agus bhí sé thar am go ndéanfaí iad. Tá bunsraith an-mhaith sa reachtaíocht seo agus molaim an t-iar Aire Comhshaoil, an Teachta Flynn, a thionscnaigh an Bille seo, as ucht é a thabhairt chun tosaigh. Deineadh go leor oibre air agus tá rudaí maithe ann. Tá súil agam go leanfar de scrúdú a dhéanamh ar chóras toghcháin na tíre, bunsraith ár ndaonlathas, agus go mbeidh Billí a dhéanfaidh tuilleadh forbartha air seo ag teacht chun tosaigh amach anseo. Tá súil agam leis go reachtálfar an Bille tríd an Seanad agus an Dáil go luath ionas go mbeidh sé i bhfeidhm don chéad toghchán eile, cibé uair thiocfaidh sé.
I welcome this Bill. It is about time we had comprehensive legislation to govern the conduct of elections and the registration of electors. It was puzzling for many returning officers and others before now at election time to be dealing with, as the Minister said, 14 pieces of legislation. It is time we had this legislation on the Statute Book.
I welcome the Minister and congratulate him on his appointment. I wish him well in his new position. He has been landed with this major legislation to which no doubt he will have to give a lot of attention over the next few weeks to get it right. The enactment of adequate legislation governing elections will be a major job well done. I wish him well with it.
I have had experiences of running for elections where I did not win but I doubt if I could take anything from Senator Ó Cuív's experience to assist me in future elections; we all have to suffer defeat from time to time. At least he had the opportunity of having a look at his name to see what was wrong. I am unfortunately stuck with the name I have and as I have it for over 60 years now I do not intend changing it. If one is not yet getting sufficiently well known in that time to get elected, then it is time to call a halt.
There are many areas dealt with in this legislation which needed attention and, with all due respect to former Ministers, while there were promises made to improve the electoral legislation it was done in a piecemeal fashion and fundamental improvements were not being made. I would like to congratulate the Minister's predecessor on bringing forward this legislation. I remember when I was in the Dáil an attempt was made to update the electoral legislation but unfortunately, it fell with the Government and we never heard about it afterwards. Let us hope this Government will stay long in power to see this through and then we should be on a straight road with regard to returning candidates either to the Dáil or to local authorities.
One improvement which many Senators have spoken about is in regard to special voters no longer having to obtain an annual medical certificate to certify they are physically incapable of getting comfortably to a polling booth and that they are of sound mind. This caused a great deal of resentment to people who had to obtain certification that they were of sound mind when nothing had ever been wrong with their mind. A number of special voters have made representations to me, and I am sure most other public representatives have come across this problem. I am glad it is now being corrected and not only is the requirement for certification of sound mind being deleted but they will no longer be requried to produce a medical certificate each year except at the discretion of the local authority. It is a good step forward and I have no doubt that local authorities dealing with the registration of the electorate will deal with the matter as intended by the Minister.
The Minister referred to the shortening of the period for compiling the register and the changing of dates. Many of us have had to deal with complaints over the years on this issue. The register was compiled from 1 September, the date on which one was required to be resident at the address at which one wished to be registered. The draft register was printed in December and corrections had to be made by 15 January. I would say that hundreds of local authority members and public representatives have complained about that provision every year during my time on the local authority. A month from 15 December to 15 January was allowed for corrections but the month extended over the Christmas period and people were far removed from thinking then about whether they were registered as voters. Indeed, even for public representatives, politics is not uppermost on their minds during the Christmas period.
I welcome the Minister's proposals to cut that Christmas period out of the time allowed for the public to lodge corrections. The local authorities are still involved with that same time period but they are better equipped to handle it. I am not sure this move is quite what the Minister and indeed most public representatives would like because the new date for publishing the register is 1 February, coming into operation on 15 February. While we have been fortunate enough not to have had too many winter elections I remember at least two in February in my time in Dáil Éireann. If I remember correctly both of them were on the same date, 18 February. I was in the Dáil for one of them only.
February is a period when Governments are in danger because it follows after the budget. I do not know if this fact has been given consideration. I know one cannot provide for every eventuality; one must do the best one can. Few people welcome the fall of a Government at budget time. This can be a dangerous period for any Government particularly for the Governments we are likely to have in the future, multi-party Governments or two party Governments. Perhaps a little more thought could be given to these dates before the legislation is passed. I have not fully thought out what date I would recommend. The Christmas period still intervenes between the date when a person should be resident to be registered and the time for publication of the register but at least the period for public inspection has now been extended.
The previous speaker dealt briefly with the deposit required from candidates. Senator Ó Cuív and other Senators referred to the increase in the deposit from £100 to £500. All of them referred to the time when £100 was set as a deposit for a nomination and most speakers I heard thought that £500 was a reasonable figure. I have an open mind on it. When £100 was set it was not envisaged that people in the lower income bracket would stand for election; it was set at a time when better off people only stood for elections. I would hate to think that the amount of deposit would prevent anybody from standing as a candidate who would otherwise be qualified to do so.
We should be careful to ensure that we enable every willing candidate to stand. I take pride in our democracy and have had many discussions both in the State and internationally about it. It was what I discussed mostly while I was a Member of the Council of Europe some years ago; we compared democracies and since the Second World War we in Europe have had our minds concentrated on democracies and the various methods used in democracies to elect a parliament. I have always felt I could defend our democracy here against the best in Europe. We have a great democracy and a good voting record.
In my youth I noted voting levels up to 80 per cent and in the high seventies; in later times they have not been quite as high but there is greater movement of population now. Even with the 70 per cent to 80 per cent vote in Dáil elections, that vote was much higher than the figure given because in any page of the register — I did this exercise several times over the years — one will find people who could not vote because they are in hospital, away or decreased. There were names on the register being counted in the 20 per cent who could not have voted that day. Our democracy was therefore healthier on election day than figures indicated.
We have a democracy that any of us can stand over, but that does not mean we cannot improve it. Consideration was no doubt given to this deposit increase from £100 to £500 before it was accepted by Government. I wonder if there are people who could not afford £500 but would like to stand for election. I ask the Minister to consider that before the Committee Stage and, if necessary, to alter the figure.
I note that the deposit for local authority elections is £10. Senator Ó Cuív referred to an event that might have happened but did not where a number of people had planned to put their names on the ballot paper for miscellaneous reasons. In my county at the last local election I am aware that some people planned to install a candidate or candidates in an area by nominating them, which they are entitled to do. The strange thing is that I can nominate Tom Jones or Mary Murphy without he or she being present and without their signature. I can submit a nomination paper, pay £10 and have the name placed on the ballot paper. The only protection for the nominee is to object by a certain date. They may not discover they have been nominated; if I nominate a person and the returning officer checks that they are on the register and I pay the £10, he must put them on the ballot paper unless he has a valid reason for refusing to do so. There should be some requirement that the returning officer know the person, or at least have the person's signature, which does not rule out the possibility of forgery. The nominated person should be contacted before the nomination is confirmed by telephone for their consent or to have them send a letter of consent but the returning officer would not know if it had been genuinely signed by the candidate. Many people do not know that any of us is entitled to hand in a nomination paper, pay the £10 and have a name placed on the ballot paper without the nominee's knowledge.
Other areas of the legislation are also open to abuse. The previous speaker referred to the opportunity for a number of people to put their names on the ballot paper even though they have no interest in the election. I do not know how one can provide against that; the system is wide open to abuse. Any organisation or person could thereby upset an election and one election in my area was almost upset in that way. One of the suggestions was to nominate a candidate with the same name as a candidate legitimately nominated. This is an area to which the Minister might give attention and if he cannot incorporate a change into this legislation, he might recommend it for inclusion in future legislation.
I note the improvement that nominees will have the £10 local election deposit or the £500 Dáil election deposit returned if they obtain a quarter of the quota; the previous stipulation of one-third of the quota was high and could deter the less well off. I ask the Minister to examine my suggestions particularly with regard to the shorter time for register compilation and the possibility of having an election upset by anyone intent on doing so for whatever reason by a proliferation of candidates.
The supplementary list is issued after the register is published. In the legislation it would appear that anyone omitted from the register and entitled to vote will be placed on the supplementary list. This could create difficulties in the Dublin area given the continuous movement of people between Dublin city and county; a large number of people could move within that period and request to go on the supplementary list. I am anxious that as many people as possible be enabled to vote but there is a danger of names being registered incorrectly on the supplementary list. That list should be confined to people who have remained at one address rather than those who have moved. In Dublin county in the past few years we have had such a movement of people that it could create difficulty for that local authority when compiling the register and supplementary list.
Debate adjourned
Sitting suspended at 6 p.m. and resumed at 6.30 p.m.