It might be helpful to the Deputy if I first set out some background information on the subject of postal voting by departmental officials and spouses serving abroad. Under the terms of the Electoral Acts, and subject to registration in the appropriate manner, civil servants serving at Irish diplomatic and consular missions outside the State, and their spouses resident with them, qualify to cast their ballots by post.
The Department of Foreign Affairs makes arrangements annually to update the official registers of electors of foreign service voters and its own internal postal vote register. The Department's present postal vote register comprises the names and addresses in Ireland of 501 registered postal voters.
On the occasion of each constitutional referendum or election, ballot papers in sealed, individually addressed envelopes are delivered to the Department for each registered postal voter. These are separated on a mission by mission basis by officers of the Department's human resources unit and then forwarded by diplomatic bag to each head of mission for onward transmission to the individual postal voters. Following the completion locally of balloting procedures, the postal votes are returned to the human resources unit by diplomatic bag, again in sealed envelopes, and forwarded to the relevant returning officers.
It is the Department's practice to allow officers serving abroad and members of their families residing with them use of the diplomatic bag facility to send and receive private correspondence. At election time, it has also been the practice to forward automatically to officers serving abroad and their spouses any personally addressed election literature received in the Department.
On 24 May last, an official of the Fianna Fáil party headquarters contacted an executive officer in the Department's human resources unit indicating that the party wished to send election literature to registered postal voters serving at diplomatic and consular posts abroad and their spouses. The human resources official declined a request to provide the party with a copy of the Department's own list of postal voters and instead provided it with the publicly available directory of the names, official addresses and official contact details of officers abroad. That list does not, however, include the names of spouses nor does it give any indication of the constituencies or local electoral areas in which the postal voters concerned are registered. The Fianna Fáil party official asked if the Department would forward to each registered postal voter election literature in the form of a single, generically addressed letter from the party leader. The human resources unit official acceded to that request.
Some days later, a quantity of Fianna Fáil election literature was delivered to the Department's registry and the officer from the human resources unit subsequently prepared diplomatic bags there for dispatch, each containing the relevant postal vote ballot papers and a quantity of the election literature concerned. Later, in the absence of the human resources unit officer concerned who was on duties in connection with the Irish EU Presidency, another officer of the human resources unit prepared further diplomatic bags containing postal vote ballot papers. In those cases, the election material in question was not included.
In the light of expressions of concern about the issue, I announced on 6 June that a review of procedures would be conducted. I also indicated that the outcome of the review would be conveyed to the political parties and made publicly known so that all candidates for election and other interested parties would be fully aware of it. The review is now under way and I expect to be able to inform interested parties of new procedures at a reasonably early date. Neither I nor anyone in my office was aware of the request regarding circulation of election material nor had any involvement in acceding to it.
The Department has always sought to be helpful to Deputies and political parties and it was in line with this that the official agreed to the request in question. The official would have equally agreed to a similar approach from other parties. However, it is accepted that the arrangements now need to be put on a more structured basis. In this regard, the Deputy can be assured that the new arrangements will ensure that the process is fully transparent and known to all interested parties at election time.
