Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage debate -
Tuesday, 24 Sep 2024

I welcome everybody to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage. We are meeting in public today to discuss electoral arrangements to protect democracy and ballot integrity. From the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, we are joined by Mr. Barry Ryan, principal officer in the franchise unit, and Ms Petra Woods, principal officer in the electoral registration modernisation project; from the Electoral Commission we are joined by Mr. Art O'Leary, chief executive, Dr. Mary-Clare O'Sullivan, head of electoral integrity and research, and Mr. Tim Carey, head of electoral operations. We are also joined by Mr. Joseph Burke, the Dublin city returning officer.

I welcome them all to the committee today and thank them for your assistance in this work. Members were circulated with copies of the opening statements in advance. I will read a short note on privilege before we begin. I remind members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the place where the Parliament has chosen to sit, which is Leinster House, in order to participate in public meetings. Witnesses attending in the committee room are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their contributions to today's meeting. This means they have an absolute defence against any defamation action for anything they say at the meeting. Members and witnesses are expected not to abuse the privilege they enjoy and it is my duty as Chairman to make sure they do not do so. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks and it is imperative that they comply with any such direction. Members and witnesses are reminded of the long-standing practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person or entity outside the House or an official, either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

I invite our witnesses to make their opening statements, beginning with the Department, followed by the Electoral Commission and then the returning officer.

I am joined this afternoon by my colleague, Ms Petra Woods, principal officer for the electoral registration modernisation project in the Department. It is good to have an opportunity to discuss various aspects of our electoral system with the committee today. Members will recall that when we were last before the committee late last year we highlighted that 2024 and 2025 would see the full suite of electoral events taking place in Ireland. Since that time, two referendums were held in March, and local elections, elections to the European Parliament and the election of a mayor in Limerick took place in June. As we know, a general election must take place in the next six months and a presidential election is due in autumn next year.

An important element of our electoral process is the electoral registration system. To improve the accuracy of the electoral register, the Electoral Reform Act 2022 introduced a number of new elements, one of which is the move to rolling registration, which allows the register to be updated throughout the year, on foot of action by local authorities on the ground, as well as on the basis of information and updates provided by individuals. Another central element is the introduction of an oversight role for An Coimisiún Toghcháin to improve the gathering of data on the register, to enable the sharing of best practice and to allow for recommendations to be made on potential improvements to processes and legislation. In concert, these reforms are intended to lead to a continuous cycle of improvement over time. In addition, the introduction of the use of personal public service numbers, PPSNs, in the process enables online engagement, improves the identification of duplicates and contributes to the timely removal of deceased people. Modernisation and the achievement of a more accurate register of electors is an ongoing process but progress has been made through a combination of public engagement campaigns, local authority efforts in their communities and the work done to date by An Coimisiún Toghcháin in promoting engagement with the electoral process.

Given the sensitivities around the integrity of elections it is important that we have a robust regime in place that will operate in tandem with, and complement, the regulatory landscape that has recently been put in place within the European Union to protect our elections and democratic institutions. Important measures introduced at European level include the introduction of the Digital Services Act, DSA, which has applied in full to all online platforms since February this year and the publication of European Commission guidelines, under Article 35 of the DSA, on the integrity of electoral processes. The strengthening of the code of practice on disinformation, which was agreed and introduced in 2022 on foot of detailed guidelines developed by the European Commission, is also of relevance. The code is signed by a broad range of actors including major online platforms. Finally, the EU regulation on the transparency and targeting of political advertising was adopted in March and has an 18-month implementation period.

The Electoral Reform Act 2022 sets out a comprehensive reform of Ireland’s electoral system, including the establishment of An Coimisiún Toghcháin. Work is continuing towards the commencement of Part 4 of the Act, which relates to the regulation of online paid political advertising during electoral periods and Part 5, which relates to the investigation and monitoring of online disinformation and misinformation and manipulative or inauthentic behaviour in respect of electoral processes during election campaign periods. In particular, Part 4 of the Act is being considered in light of the EU regulation on the transparency and targeting of political advertising which I just mentioned. The proposed amendments to Part 5 of the Act, which are aimed principally at ensuring alignment with the DSA, were formally notified to the European Commission in July, in accordance with TRIS requirements.

Subject to any views that emerge from the commission, the stand-still period under the notification procedure will end on 4 October.

It is worth noting that, in April 2024, An Coimisiún Toghcháin published a voluntary framework on online electoral process information, political advertising and deceptive AI content ahead of the local and European elections and in advance of Parts 4 and 5 of the Electoral Reform Act being commenced. It was developed in consultation with various stakeholders including Technology Ireland and applies to platforms, political parties and candidates with the aim of safeguarding information around the electoral process.

Lastly, I will point to a number of other electoral reform commitments in the programme for Government, namely, examining the Scottish experience of reducing the voting age, the use of posters at elections and referendums, the use of postal voting with a view to expanding its use, the replacement of by-elections with an alternate list system and the time limitation on people who are temporarily living outside the State to remain on the electoral register. An examination of these issues, along with other electoral matters, is contained in An Coimisiún Toghcháin’s research programme, published earlier this year.

I thank the committee. Ms Woods and I will be happy to engage further with the committee this afternoon.

Gabhaim míle buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach as an gcuireadh a bheith leis an gcomhchoiste ag an gcruinniú tábhachtach seo. As the Chairman mentioned, I am joined today by Tim Carey, head of electoral operations for An Coimisiún Toghcháin, and Mary-Clare O’Sullivan, head of electoral integrity and research.

It is now 19 months since An Coimisiún Toghcháin was established as Ireland’s independent electoral commission. In that time, our growing team has delivered our functions in respect of two national elections, two referendums, a mayoral election, one Dáil constituency review and two European Parliament constituency reviews. We have overseen the casting of 6.7 million individual ballots in national votes this year with the obvious possibility of more to come between now and March. An coimisiún has published our first constituency review, our first post-electoral event review, our first referendum information campaign report and our framework on online electoral process information and has established our priorities for the period to 2026 through our inaugural strategy statement and our first research programme. We will start the process of producing our first public engagement and education strategy shortly and are now finalising the data and detail on our assessment of Ireland’s electoral registers as maintained by the registration authorities. Of course, we are also making our preparations for a general election before March of next year, the subsequent Seanad elections and the presidential election. Our independent status sees us report directly to the Oireachtas and I am happy that this is my fifth appearance before these Houses and my second appearance before this particular committee.

For today’s discussion, it is important to demarcate between the administration of electoral events, which largely falls to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, the local authorities and returning officers, and our purpose as an coimisiún, which is to safeguard and strengthen democracy in Ireland by building public understanding, participation and trust in the electoral system. I would like to briefly mention three aspects of that role.

The first is electoral registration. The state of our electoral registers is a long-standing issue of some concern to the Members of these Houses. Our function is to oversee the electoral register and we have engaged directly with every local authority through what has been a particularly busy and challenging year for all franchise staff. To be clear, we are finding that there are wide variances in the resourcing of local authorities’ franchise functions and in the performance of those functions. Our report, which will be laid before the Houses and published towards the end of this year, will set out our overall assessment of the state of Ireland’s electoral registers with regard to accuracy, completeness and quality.

An coimisiún has already shown that our campaigns and public awareness work has an impact on people’s actions and democratic engagement. Importantly, we believe we are earning the public’s trust as a newly established body. In the last week of the 8 March referendums, more people looked to the information provided by an coimisiún to inform their vote than any other source. Some 84% of people said they trusted our independent referendum information and 78% said our referendum information booklet delivered to their homes was helpful in their voting decision. Our media campaigns on voter registration have contributed to over 250,000 people joining the register between December 2023 and June 2024. Our education campaign entitled “Don’t spoil your day” to cut the number of spoilt ballots in the recent June local and European elections saw a significant 29% reduction in the level of spoilt votes seen in those ballots.

There was a reduction of 31,000 spoilt votes since 2019, despite a larger number of people voting.

Research is one of our most significant and innovative functions. Our first research programme sets out our research priorities for the next three years across five strands. It identifies immediate priorities for this year, including developing a longitudinal national election and democracy study for Ireland; research focused on postering; voting at 16; a review of the 1997 Electoral Act; items arising from the most recent constituency review; and research on the democratic engagement of underrepresented groups. As the first step in the development of the national election and democracy study, a pilot study was commissioned for the 8 March referendums, and two surveys conducted around the local, European and Limerick mayoral elections on 7 June.

The value of this kind of detailed, rigorous data is already clear as it is being used not only by ourselves at an coimisiún but also by political scientists, journalists, political parties and candidates to gain deeper understandings of Ireland’s voters, their knowledge, voting experience and perspectives on our democratic system more broadly.

As one of the longest continuous democracies in the world, people in Ireland have always had great trust in our system of voting and in the integrity of elections in this country. Voter registration and turnout are obviously key metrics of democratic participation and must be a key focus for us, but we also need to act to promote people’s medium and long-term democratic engagement through wider education and regular conversations with people of all backgrounds and perspectives. Our democratic process does not start or end with the ballot paper landing in the box. The challenge to us is in building a sustained culture and tradition of democratic understanding, participation and empowerment that is passed on within generations from parent and grandparent to child. I am happy to take any questions the Committee might have.

As Dublin city sheriff, I am the returning officer for the five Dublin city constituencies, which are Dublin Bay North, Dublin Bay South, Dublin Central, Dublin South-Central and Dublin North-West. The total electorate across my five constituencies is approximately 360,000. I am the returning officer for Dáil elections, presidential elections and referendums. I am not the returning officer for the local elections or European elections. However, I am responsible for facilitating the taking of the poll in these elections in my five constituencies, segregating and verifying the votes and dispatching the votes to the local and European returning officers for the counting of the votes.

In a Dáil election, I am responsible for the management of the nomination of candidates, which includes agreeing what address appears on the ballot paper for each candidate. In all electoral events, I am responsible for the taking of the poll, the provision of polling stations, ballot boxes, ballot papers, ballot paper templates, stamping instruments, copies of the register of electors including balancing list and the employment of poll and count staff. In all electoral events, apart from local and European elections, I am responsible for the counting of the votes and filing returns certifying the results of the count.

I am not responsible for the register of electors, which is the responsibility of the franchise department of the local authority. Responsibility for control and regulation of posters is not within my remit except ensuring there are no posters within 50 m of the entrance to polling places. All my polling station inspectors carry out checks for posters within 50 metres of the entrance to polling places on each visit to the polling places. If there are posters within 50 m of the entrance, they contact the local authority teams assigned to remove the posters on polling day and notify the gardaí who are responsible for enforcement.

I am not responsible for the safety and prevention of abuse of candidates, except in the count centre. In advance of all electoral events I meet with the local gardaí and we assess the level of risk for people attending the count, including candidates. Based on the advice of the gardaí, I engage a security contractor to provide sufficient trained and experienced staff for the count centre. The putting in place of controls to prevent actors outside the State using social media and digital communications to influence public opinion and voters is not my responsibility. In my constituencies, I have approximately 125 polling places with approximately 500 polling stations. I recruit and train approximately 1,200 people to work in the polling places on polling day. The recruitment of staff is carried out by inviting applications for the following positions on my website: poll clerk, presiding officer and supervisor. We also contact people who have worked in previous electoral events and many of our staff have been working on elections for a number of years.

In some cases, particularly Dáil elections, we get very short notice of an electoral event and this can make the recruitment and training of staff difficult.

However, we have always recruited and trained sufficient staff to carry out the necessary functions for all electoral events. While we are fortunate to have almost full employment in the country at present, this means that the recruitment process for electoral events is becoming more challenging and the level of pay allowed for staff is no longer attractive to many people given the hours they are required to work and the level of tax deducted from their gross pay. The staff in question are expected to work from approximately 6.30 a.m. to 10.30 p.m. on polling day which is circa 16 hours. The rate of pay for the hours they are required to work and the responsibilities they have are making it increasingly difficult to retain and recruit staff. We have highlighted this on a number of occasions to the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform and are hopeful in the next charges order that the rates of pay can be increased.

All presiding officers and supervisors are provided with training prior to each electoral event, and they also receive the manual for presiding officers published by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, which provides clear guidance on each and every facet of their role. The training includes training on how to prevent voter personation at polling stations and there are clear guidelines for presiding officers in the manual for presiding officers on the prevention of voter personation. In addition to the staff I employ directly, I engage a contractor to run the logistical aspects of the taking of the poll and the setting up of the count centre. The preparation of polling places and the count centre is a significant task. It requires careful planning and must be managed and executed with precision as the timelines are very tight and there is no margin for error. On polling day, in addition to the staff employed in the polling places, I employ approximately 20 inspectors to travel around the constituencies and inspect each polling station a number of times each day. On each visit the inspector checks in with the presiding officer or supervisor to ensure there are no issues with the conduct of the poll. The inspectors are experienced and are available throughout the day to deal with any issues that may arise. Each inspector is responsible for approximately six polling places, and they provide a report to me on the day after the election in respect of each polling place. If any issue arises in a polling place on the day of the election, the supervisor or presiding officer contacts the inspector and the issue is resolved or escalated to me. The presiding officers do not compile reports themselves as the inspectors fulfil this function.

I am also responsible for the issuing and management of special votes and postal votes. This process is managed from my office in the days before the poll takes places by a team of experienced staff. We issued approximately 1,100 postal votes in the recent referendum and we facilitated approximately 925 people to exercise special votes. On the day of the count, I employ approximately 500 people in the count centre to count the votes. I have a team of experienced top-table staff who manage the count, many of whom are employed by the local authority or are in responsible positions in the private sector. It is essential that I have a strong and experienced team of people available to ensure the smooth running of an electoral event and I want to acknowledge the huge contribution each of them makes to the successful running of my electoral events. I am conscious of the need to attract new people onto the team in order to ensure they gain the necessary experience to take over the top-table roles in the future and this is an ongoing but challenging process.

Being integrally involved in the democratic process in my role as returning officer is a huge honour. I take seriously my responsibility to ensure that all persons entitled to vote can exercise their vote and a considerable amount of time and resources is dedicated to ensuring that all staff are trained appropriately for their roles. I am happy to answer any questions on my areas of responsibility.

We will not ask them for the outcome of it either. I thank the witnesses for being here. This is important subject matter, so we appreciate their time and the work they all do to ensure our democracy functions to its best capacity. I will raise three areas of particular interest in my first round that I would like to explore with them. One is the register integrity, the second is voter personation activity or lack thereof, and the third is political advertising. Register integrity is referenced in at least two of the statements. Mr. Burke said he deals with the register he is given, so he is out of this round of questioning and can relax for the moment. Both of the opening statements talk about improvement and working towards improving the quality of the register, the accuracy and all of that. However, it is not clear to me who actually owns that process. Is it the 31 individual local authorities? Is it the Department? Is it the Electoral Commission? Most important, how is that improvement being measured and how will it be reported on? That was not initially clear to me.

I turn to voter personation.

This is a question that Mr. Burke is probably best positioned to answer. We invited him to this meeting because he is the returning officer for Dublin, which is an area with a big voting population, busy polling stations and where a good proportion of the electorate is also quite transient. From reading his opening statement and my knowledge derived in practice, the inspectors are the only individuals tasked with writing a report on what event, if any, occurred in a polling station. That is my understanding. It appears, therefore, that there have been no reports of personation. Is that correct? If not, how is that actually reported?

Mr. Burke mentioned payments to staff. I appreciate where he is coming from in trying to recruit 1,200 staff. Every sector is struggling in this regard, so I do not know how he would not be. It is incredibly challenging to do it on a temporary basis and at short notice. The rate of pay was referred to. What is the hourly rate of pay? How does Mr. Burke feel his discussions are progressing to try to make these posts a more attractive proposition in a market where there is full employment? What training is given to those who work in the polling stations to deal with and tackle personation?

Turning to political advertising, I guess these questions are for the witnesses from the Electoral Commission and the Department. Part 4 of the Electoral Reform Act 2022 has not been enacted. I appreciate that guidelines have been issued, but they are guidelines. If an election were to be held within the next six months, it is unlikely that Part 4 of the Act will have been enacted by then. Can the witnesses share with us their level of confidence regarding how engaged the very large online service providers are in adopting and complying with the guidelines? How is that working in practice? What level of transparency do the witnesses feel they are getting from the very large operators such as TikTok, Meta and whoever else? Are those companies sharing data with the Electoral Commission and the Department? What level of confidence is there in the accuracy and veracity of that data? How is it being verified? Is it being done in-house or is there a reliance on external data experts to look at it?

In answer to the first question regarding who owns the improvements, electoral registration has always been a matter for individual local authorities. Each local authority is a registration authority in respect of its own administrative area. It is that local authority's responsibility to maintain that register. Regarding the improvements we have provided for, we have done this by creating a more flexible context for local authorities to operate in. They can now update the register on a rolling basis and this is what Mr. Ryan alluded to. We have also made it easier for people to engage and to provide the local authorities with the information they need to update the register, either concerning their own details or those of others, including people who are deceased, for example, and so on.

In addition to the work of improving the data as they go, we have also put in place this reporting relationship with the Electoral Commission to ensure that not only are they doing the work but that they can report annually on it. This can include what the local authorities are doing and how that work is contributing to improving accuracy and completeness. What we are seeing now is almost the full cycle, complete with the reporting to the Electoral Commission having taken place, and it is due to report now on how that work is progressing and is going to be measured.

That is the plan. As Ms Woods mentioned, this is one of our key roles because we have always taken the view that the electoral register is the foundation block for everything. The two keywords here are "completeness" and "accuracy". This means that everybody entitled to be on the register should be on the register and all the details we have about people should be correct too. Mr. Carey and his team have had many engagements with the registration authorities in the last year. I think they visited ten of the local authorities, the registration authorities, in person.

We have also had two levels of a paper-based engagement as well, so we are starting to see data. We are starting to see figures around the number of people on the register compared with the populations in those areas, which vary from 73% to 108%. It is clear the priority the work of franchise sections in local authority sections is given is very different and it is clear to all of us that more needs to be done. Members will see from the data when it emerges towards the end of the year that we will be having conversations with chief executives of local authorities in areas where there is clearly more work to be done.

With some of the new people who are turning up on the register, we are starting to get PPS numbers, dates of birth and eircodes. These are unique identifiers that will help us in the years ahead. There is, however, a great swathe of people who are on the register and perhaps duplicated all over the country. We speak about the register as if it is a single entity, but there are 31 different registers and they do not talk to each other, except perhaps in Dublin. Ms Woods's oversight of the modernisation programme will deal with that by creating a single database that will give us the opportunity to spot duplicates, such as people who moved house, were born somewhere and went to college somewhere else, etc. While I will not say the electoral register is going to be bulletproof, in the next couple of years it will be significantly enhanced. When that happens we will be able to measure things properly, including turnout at elections. The turnout figures are unreliable at best at the moment.

I think the average hourly rate in the first quarter of this year was something like €30 or €29.50 according to the CSO. This is less than that. It is not me suggesting the amount being paid is not sufficient. Rather, that is the feedback I am getting from people I employ and whom we seek to re-employ. They tell us they worked for us previously but are not prepared to do so again because they do not think it is worth their time based on what they got in take-home pay. Previously, there was some facility whereby there was a different taxation regime in relation to the payment for workers, so some people were used to getting a particular figure. It was then slightly changed at some time in the last decade or so, which means they get less now than they used to for the same work, which is always a problem. That also impacts. It is certainly not me who is suggesting the figure is not sufficient. I am just providing the committee with the feedback I am getting from people. The returning officers have spoken previously to the Department of public expenditure about it. I think there was some adjustment made between March and June and we are hopeful there might be further adjustments made in the future. It is a recurring theme for me when I am dealing with people and trying to recruit. That is why I have highlighted it.

On training, it is important to understand that a manual is provided by the Department for the presiding officers. I have a copy here. That is one part of the training presiding officers receive. It sets out in a very clear way all the matters they need to be aware of and deal with on polling day. In addition, all the presiding officers and supervisory presiding officers are brought in for face-to-face training on the weekends before the elections. At that training a very experienced trainer goes through every aspect of the duties, including demonstrations with the ballot box and ballot papers. A video is also provided which the officers watch. Any queries they might have about their duties are addressed then.

Poll clerks always work in conjunction with the presiding officer. The two of them are at the table together. The poll clerk also gets training by way of a video that is distributed. Again, there is a large volume of poll clerks and in the time available to us, it is not always possible to get them in for face-to-face training. There is a particular video for poll clerks that very clearly explains their duties. Presiding officers are briefed in advance that their first duty on the morning is to ascertain whether poll clerks have previously worked on elections and, if not, to again go through with them what their duties are. Poll clerks and staff arrive at 6.30 a.m. so there is time for a discussion. The poll clerk works under the supervision of the presiding officer at all times.

The system works. From the point of view of any issues that arise during the day regarding somebody's performance, the chain of command is that the presiding officer brings it to the attention of the inspector. Inspectors attend each polling place three to four times during the day. I attend a lot of them. I spend most of the day of the poll travelling around the city calling in to check to see what is happening in polling stations, to observe and to make sure things are being carried out to my satisfaction and in the way we expect them to be carried out. There is a chain of command for the reporting of any incidents. If a poll clerk is not performing his or her duties, a very clear system is in place whereby the office can be contacted by the presiding officer or inspector and a replacement person sent in to take up duties, including when somebody falls ill or for whatever reason. It works the same way as in many workplaces. There is a chain of seniority. If there is an issue, it is addressed on the day.

I am sure we will continue some of these themes anyway. I thank the witnesses for their presentations. On behalf of returning officers, and election polling staff and count staff everywhere, I acknowledge the enormous effort people make. We have all fought any number of elections as successful and unsuccessful candidates and as directors of elections. I am never not impressed by the level of efficiency in any of the polling stations and count centres I have been in and I have done quite a lot of them.

I am interested to know whether a similar issue regarding staff and remuneration applies to count centres. In some senses, while a polling station is a long shift at 16 hours, it starts and finishes, but a count centre is very different. For those of us who have had the nervousness of very late-night counts, are similar staffing difficulties being experienced there? If Mr. Burke does not get the positive response he is hoping for from the Department, does he anticipate problems with polling centres and count centres in future?

I compliment Mr. O'Leary on the very successful output of the commission since it was established. He is almost a de facto member of the committee at this stage. The committee had very strong cross-party support both for the establishment of the commission and the work it is doing. Specifically, I am interested in three supplementary matters to Mr. O'Leary's presentation. To carry on with the issue of registration, the commission's report will be laid before the Houses at the end of this year. I presume that could have recommendations and actions for the registration authorities and potentially the Department and the commission. Will he talk us through whether there are recommendations and actions that need to be taken? If these are not taken by individual registration authorities, what happens next? Whose responsibility is it then to - "enforce" might be too strong a word - ensure compliance? Does that rest with the Department or the commission? Given many local authorities have very significant staffing challenges, their problems might be that they want to do X, Y and Z but there are staffing challenges. That does not rest with the Department of housing but ultimately with the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform and the Government. How do we resolve those challenges?

With respect to the research, that first piece of research and the study are very welcome and very good. Is that all done in-house? Is the commission working with folks from our political science community who have been involved in previously funded Government research on that? While voter registration and turnout were mentioned, not much was said on worker action on those. Will the witnesses give us a sense of what might be coming down the line with respect to all of that?

I commend the Department on its work, so it does not feel left out from the compliments. We normally give it a hard time. On the other areas it is looking at, are there any specific timelines relating to any of the pieces of work outlined in the four or five bullet points on page 2?

I will deal with the first part. The Deputy quite rightly distinguished between the people who work on the day of the poll and those in the count centres.

The majority of the people who work at the count are very interested in the counting process and really enjoy it. While I would not say that the pay is irrelevant, it is not the driving force for the majority of them and certainly not for the top table people. We are very lucky that a lot of the people who work for us in the count centre are employees of local authorities. They are involved in the count when the local election count takes place and then are available to me for the election events I am responsible for. We supplement that then with new people. It certainly is not as much of a challenge to have people for the count. We do not have the same difficulties as we might have for polling day. The volume is obviously much smaller. It is 500 people for a count and it is 1,200 people for a polling day. Some people do both. The greater pressure is to have enough people on polling day. I do not want anybody to get the impression that there is any risk or any chance that we are not going to have enough people to do these jobs. We have had two election events this year and we filled all the spaces. I am just highlighting that it is getting more challenging. That is as far as I am going with it. I am not suggesting to anybody that we will not be able to do what we have to do. We have always managed to do it and I am confident we can still do that. The timing of the local elections and European Union elections in June caused particular pressure points. We have some students who work for us, and it is great to get students and young people involved in the process because then hopefully we would have them for the future, but a lot of them were doing exams and some of them maybe were going away for the summer so they were not available in June. It caused an extra pressure in filling the positions but that is just a seasonal thing. While I indicate this as a challenge, it is not something I am concerned about.

Ultimately, on the question of who is responsible for the recommendations, one would be making scattergun recommendations as this is the responsibility of very different people. For example, with the electoral register it may be that we go to some chief executives and say that they need to give greater priority within their local authorities to the franchise section. I have told the story before that Mr. Carey and I attended a conference to speak to the franchise teams about the forthcoming elections. Some people got up to leave the conference midway through it. We asked where they were off to. They were off to interview lifeguards for summer jobs because the franchise sections tend to be based in the corporate services sections, a bucket into which everything is thrown that does not fit anywhere else. It is something that will likely come from our recommendations here.

I have seen the recommendations. Will they have that level of detail in the public domain that will then allow for that? One of the functions of this committee is to have a role in tracking. For example, if the witnesses are to say that X,Y and Z local authorities need to put more emphasis or resources into the franchise section and if they do not do that our committee will have a very important role in tracking that. Maybe they do not have the staff and we have to then go to the Department and the Minister and hold them to account. Or maybe a chief executive is not prioritising. The more explicit the information into the public domain the better is the role we can play constructively in ensuring compliance with those recommendations.

Every registration authority will have a return. They have made a return to us giving details of the work that they have done, the accuracy and the completeness. We have matched that with some of the CSO data as well. That detail will be in our report at the end of the year so it will be very obvious what is working well and what is not. There might be very different reasons as to why it is not working well but we hope to bring transparency to the register, which is hugely important.

On the research issue and the national election study, we have the finest political scientists in the country on our management board who helped us with the design of the questionnaire. Members will have seen some of the detail of this study as well. Historically we know so little about voters in this country and we know nothing about would be, could be, and should be voters. This national election and democracy study, NEDS, is an opportunity for us to really get under the bonnet here and start to understand why people do not vote and what motivates people to get out there as well, which will help us also. We have a research advisory group on the wider research programme that is made-up of lawyers and academics and people with disabilities, Travellers and so on, to really allow us to target some of the research on some of these under-represented and under-reached groups.

We need some help and I am very happy that we have some of the best people in the country working with us on that. The Deputy asked me about some details of the action we have taken on issues like turnout. Some of the big-picture stuff is very easy to determine. We have our Check the Register campaign, which we ran for six months, and the Department did something similar with the local authorities. Some 250,000 extra people joined the register in those six months so it is clear that that worked. We also ran a separate campaign on spoiled votes that greatly reduced - by 30% - the number of spoiled votes. It is complicated with two ballot papers, etc. We are happy with the work we do which we are using as pilot programmes also and will continue to do that.

We tend to separate each campaign into three different parts. The first part is to check the register and to get people on the register quickly. With a general election, as Mr. Burke mentioned earlier on, there is not much time. We will need to be active very quickly in that space to get people on the register and then to explain how to vote. One thing we have discovered is that nobody ever sits down to explain how it is that one votes. We, the staff and commission members, hung around for an unhealthy amount of time in count centres all over March and June to understand the kind of mistakes people are making on ballot papers so that we can design our programmes to correct these mistakes as well. The fruits of that work will be seen in the coming general election campaign where we will be dealing with people and explaining how it is that they should vote properly. The final element of the campaign is activation. In the last three, four to five days of the campaign, we will be encouraging people to start making plans to vote. When will they vote, how will they get there, etc.? That has also been a hugely successful part of what we have done.

With the referendum in March, the turnout was something around 45% but some of the campaigns, analysts and commentators on this were expecting some of the lowest turnout of all time. It was about mid-range for a stand-alone referendum. We are reasonably happy with that but our long-term ambition here is for everybody who is entitled to be on the register and they should be getting out to vote as well.

One interesting set of statistics which also came from our National Election and Democracy Study, NEDS, related to when people turn to making up their minds as to who to vote for. While it may be something to do with the size of the ballot paper, 28% of people made up their minds in the last 24 hours as to who they are going to vote for in the European Parliament elections. That matters and we made a recommendation for the removal of the broadcast moratorium because we need as much information as possible available for people during that last 24 hours, which is important.

If I may, Chair, I will address some of the four or five points the Deputy mentioned at the end of my contribution about voting age, use of posters, the use of postal voting, the replacement of by-elections, and the limitation on persons who are temporarily living outside of the State with regard to the electoral register. Those issues were before the committee the last time the Electoral Commission's research programme was out for public consultation. Those issues have been included in the Electoral Commission's research programme and the timelines set out in that programme for the commission-----

-----and the timelines. In the first instance, it is a matter for the commission and the recommendations which emerge from there. Recommendations could obviously stray into and require legislative change or indeed constitutional change, certainly in respect of the voting age. The timelines are with the commission in the first instance.

We have issues here as well. If we are going to fire the starting gun on many of these research programmes probably at the same time, this will depend on if there are complicated procurement issues around how we do this. I like the idea of doing as much research internally as we can because I want to build up the expertise within the organisation that will become part of the culture.

We are building a learning organisation where we will get the best use and best value for money. These chickens will come home to roost at different times over the next three years. The Department is probably relieved that we are looking at all these issues for it but at some point it is going to have to face into the recommendations as well and actually do something about it.

I am grateful to the attendees. It is a very interesting conversation. I am struck by the point that the electoral register is the beginning and the end of the electoral process in many respects. I am still confused. Senator Fitzpatrick asked a searing question in respect of whose function it is. It is the function of the Department and the individual local authority, and there is a bit for the Electoral Commission in it. It is extremely frustrating for somebody to turn up on polling day and find they are not on the register. They may not be on the register because they have never been on it or because they are on it somewhere else, for example, if they have moved from Dublin to Cork and have not been re-registered. To a lesser extent perhaps, there are people who are no longer resident in the area or are perhaps deceased but have not been removed from the register. What end destination do the witnesses see in terms of the flexibility to fix the register? There will always be the challenge of having it 100% correct. If I find out at the appropriate time, can it be fixed? What is that appropriate time? Is it envisaged that technology will allow somebody to register to vote in their local area up to the last minute? There is now a deadline for registering which is some number of days before polling. The technology surely should enable it to be more flexible than that. What data does the Electoral Commission have? We heard the commission has got returns back from each of the 31 local authorities that are involved in compiling registers. It obviously has a hierarchy and knows which of them are good performers. What indices are used to measure that? Which local authorities are good and which are bad, if that is not an unfair question? I would like to know.

This is informed by personal experience of election campaigns, being both a candidate and an activist. There is nothing worse than landing on a door and asking if Mr. Jim Murphy is inside, and meeting a woman who says Jim died two years ago, while you are looking at a register that has Jim still on it. There could be someone else in the area and you find the deadline has gone for registering, you are knocking on their door and they cannot vote at all. What is the end destination in terms of compiling the register and where we are at in that regard? The Electoral Commission has the data and knows who is good and who is bad. Maybe we could get some information on that.

I would like to ask Mr. Burke, who may be the only witness who has the relevant experience of individual constituencies, about impersonation. Has he encountered instances of that? What are the consequences? Have there been prosecutions? I have not heard of any prosecutions for impersonation in recent years. The last one I can recall, and it might be best if I did not mention it, was a rather high-profile case some years back, probably before most of the people in this room were actively involved in politics. I do not hear of impersonation any more. That does mean I am naive enough to believe it does not happen. Has it happened in the Dublin constituencies? Have there been prosecutions? Impersonation is a serious offence and it should be highlighted and prosecuted where there is evidence of it.

The other issue I would like to raise in the context of compiling the register is the different demarcations for the entitlement to vote in Dáil, local and European elections, and particularly in constitutional referenda. It seems an almost arbitrary determination. Anybody who might have a foreign-sounding name is almost automatically excluded from being entitled to vote in a referendum, although many of these people hold citizenship and should be entitled to vote. I would like to know how that is determined in compiling the register. What data is used? Is it up to the individual to bring his or her citizenship entitlement to vote in a referendum to the attention of those compiling the register?

Is there somebody sitting behind a desk who knows the person's status and eligibility to vote in a local election, Dáil election or a referendum? How is that determined? I apologise for taking a scattergun approach.

I thank the Deputy. Those are very good questions. I agree that the worst thing is for somebody to turn up at a polling station and find they are not the register when they should be. Over time, this has resulted in local authorities becoming quite risk averse in removing people. When they cannot be certain of an individual’s identity they are very careful about removing them. This is to ensure people are not inadvertently disenfranchised. People may have similar names or the same name and they may live at similar addresses or the same address and so on.

What we have provided for in the Electoral Reform Act 2022 is a number of more flexible arrangements. First among them is rolling registration. That allows these updates to take place on a rolling basis. People are not waiting for the campaign in November and a closed register until the supplement is in place. People are very busy. Previously, people had to queue at a Garda station to get their form signed in the run-up to an electoral event. That is a significant investment of time. By changing the way people can engage with the register through enabling online registration, we have made that much easier. People can now register online using their personal public service number, PPSN, name and address. In doing so, they can also provide information updates when they find themselves on the register.

Not yet. It is in progress. Each local authority has its own register and system. What is in place now is a central application portal, available through www.checktheregister.ie. What that means is that if a person is moving from Macroom to somewhere else in Cork, he or she can notify both local authorities at the same time. There is a streamlined process for doing so. The system still relies on the person in question providing information about where he or she is moving from and to. That is not the same as having everybody together.

Yes. A local authority can find duplications and has the power to remove them. That is the first aspect. The ultimate aim, as the Deputy said, is to have one single way of checking when people move around the country. That currently exists in Dublin. The four local authorities in Dublin use one shared system which finds people who are duplicated within them. The final strand of the modernisation process is the development of that system into a national system for everybody. That is due to be completed by mid-2026. It is in train and local authorities are gearing up for it. Dublin City Council is the designated registration authority managing that project for all local authorities. That will be possible.

The register has always depended on the work of local authorities, with the co-operation of the public. The local authorities have limited information. They do not have a civil registry, as exists in many other countries where people have to provide notice of each house move and so on. There is a requirement there.

We have made it easier for people to notify their local authorities. That is the first thing. There was always a means of third-party claims and we have made that process easier by making a form available on the website.

Any person.who has a belief that there is an inaccuracy on the register can bring it to the attention of the local authority. The local authority then has powers to act on that, investigate it and notify everybody concerned. As I said, the authority can make corrections as they come up.

On citizenship, when people apply to be on the register, they provide their nationality and that is the determinant. It is not arbitrary. The 1992 Act sets out very clearly the entitlement to vote in each type of electoral event. People put down their citizenship on the application and that determines their eligibility. If they are not happy with that, if someone makes an incorrect assumption or does not provide the information, or if the local authorities are not certain, they have the power - and have always had it - to ask for any information they need to compile the register. They can ask for a passport, proof of citizenship, a birth certificate or other forms of identity and identification. There is a very non-arbitrary way of doing that. In cases where people have been on the register for a very long time, they may also follow up on those if they think there is some issue with that.

In my experience, personation is not a big issue or an issue at all. The evidence that supports that, to go back to one of the questions asked by Senator Fitzpatrick, is that there is a procedure in place. I referred to the inspectors compiling a report but there is a procedure in place whereby the presiding officer, if he or she is satisfied that somebody has engaged in an attempt at personation, is required - and this is set out clearly in the manual - to fill in on the back of the ballot paper account form details of the name of the person and his or her number on the register. That is returned to my office and it is picked up in the review afterwards. I do not have any of those and have not had any in the recent elections or in any of the election events that I have been involved in. There is a provision for personation agents to be appointed and in the two most recent events there were no personation agents attending at any of the polling places. If there was a concern out there that there was a problem with personation, I would expect that political parties would be aware of it and would be appointing personation agents to attend polling places.

The procedure is that when people turn up at a polling station, the presiding officer or poll clerk will ask them their name. There is a system in place whereby we have a random check where we look for identification documents. That is done on a random basis and the requirement is that at least one in every four voters that come in is asked to produced identification. If, in addition to that, poll clerks or presiding officers form a view that the person attending is in any way not likely to be the person whose name is on the register, they can engage in a procedure, which is set out in detail in the manual for presiding officers, whereby they ask the person a series of questions. They can actually ask the person to swear an oath and answer specific questions. There is a quite detailed process in place if there is any suspicion on the part of the staff in the polling station. Staff are well trained in that process and any time there is any suspicion they use their discretion and common sense and follow the procedure. I am not getting any reports of a significant issue with personation in any of the polling places. If there was an issue, it would be something to be concerned about but there is no significant, if any, level of reporting of it.

I have just one final supplementary question. Is the offence to actually have executed the personation and to have cast a ballot in someone else's name or is the offence to attempt to do it?

If somebody attempts to do it but is confronted and then retreats-----

The offence is to apply for the ballot paper. If he or she comes in and apply for a ballot paper under the name of somebody else, the presiding officer is entitled to ask a member of An Garda Síochána to arrest the individual. Alternatively, if personation agents are present in the polling station and they form the view that somebody has applied for a ballot paper in somebody else's name, they can ask that the person is arrested by the gardaí, provided they are prepared to swear a declaration that says that they have formed the view that the person is committing an personation offence. Obviously, they will ultimately be a witness in the prosecution.

To reiterate something Deputy Ó Broin said, most of us have been around count centres for many years and I find the returning officers and the staff do an excellent job. It can be a difficult work environment. It is a long day and is full of anxious, stressed out politicians. The count centre is one of the best places associated with politics in this country. Everybody should get a look at a count centre now and again to see what it is like. In general, I find the returning officers and the staff do an excellent job.

It is a bit of both. It may also have been something to do with the fact that we had not had an electoral event in this country since 2020. There was not one for more than four years, which was unusual and people who were aged 14, 15, 16 and 17 during the most recent electoral event all became eligible to vote. I like to think that some of the campaigns we ran had an impact as well. We ran some unusual innovative ads, such as the chipper and hairdresser ads that the Cathaoirleach might remember, which seemed to catch the imagination of particularly young people. I know some people were disappointed with the ad campaign and they did not think they were very good but as I always said, if you do not like this ad, then it is probably not aimed at you.

No, these are just new registrations. There were other people, when we ran the check the register campaign, who we asked to confirm their details on the register were correct. In the previous four years, they may have moved address or whatever. There was a huge change here and we should not let the session go by without congratulating the franchise teams in each of the local authorities. They got through a huge number of new registrations as well and they worked late nights and weekends to make sure everybody who applied managed to get on the register in advance of the election date.

A provision in the Electoral (Amendment) Act that we passed last year was that 16- and 17-year-olds could pre-register and people who did not have a fixed address were able to register the place they were most likely to be in residence. Has Mr. O'Leary any idea of the take-up on that? Has he had any time to analyse that or is that something the commission looking at?

It is a priority for us because the take-up of 16- and 17-year-olds is very low. Two percent of 16- and 17-year-olds pre-register. We are helped by the fact that, unusually for a communications campaign, we know exactly who these people are, where they are and when they will be there. We will be creating an education campaign to be in schools with 16- and 17-year-olds. The Cathaoirleach may have seen our short video where we showed somebody registering to vote. It takes two minutes and 57 seconds to register to vote now.

Yes, to register online with your PPS number.

We will be running campaigns and encouraging teachers and kids with their iPhone or iPad in classrooms to take three minutes before the lesson to register to vote. We have a huge opportunity to get a vast swathe of people onto the register, so they will not have to do it when they turn 18.

We talked about spoiling the vote and educating and helping people so they do not spoil their vote. Although the rules have become a lot clearer on what is and is not acceptable, there is a lot less debate when it comes to the scrutinising at count centres of votes that are questionable. I came across one example recently, which was demoralising, where ballot papers had not been stamped properly but had gone into the ballot box. There could have been up to five of these in a row. We are not allowed to be informed of what booth or polling station those came from, but the returning officer has that information. Does the returning officer ever point out to those involved that the station was an outlier and ask what happened? Is it just a fact of human error, that when doing repetitive tasks, they just forget and it does not get stamped? Is that generally the cause of that?

I share the frustration of the Chair and everybody else in that regard. I see that as a significant failure on the part of my staff. We have a zero tolerance approach, and we can trace it back to which ballot box it was and to which table. If you are the presiding officer or poll clerk at that table, you will not be re-employed. We put a huge amount of time and resources into reminding people and explaining to them how important it is that every ballot paper should be stamped. What seems to happen is they forget to do one, and it is never just one. They just forget to do it for four or five, and then the other person at the table - because they are in twos - spots it and tells them they have missed the last ones. They go back stamping again, but by the time they have realised it, they have missed a few. In my view it is unforgivable.

On the issue of registering to vote, I came across a situation where somebody in a new housing estate had tried to register and did not have an eircode issued to them yet. Is that a problem in trying to register? It is not. Is there a section to put in your eircode? There is, but you do not necessarily have to have that. It is not compulsory to fill in an eircode, or is it?

I think it is compulsory to have an eircode for the online process, so there is a delay for those people. Again, it is a problem coming up to an electoral event, but I can follow it up and see. In general, it should be something that should not occur very often. There is still a paper form you can fill out that does not require that.

I do not know. I am on the transport committee as well. In transport and communications, we talked about eircodes. I do not know how quickly an eircode gets issued when you move into a home. You obviously have a postal address. I do not know how long it takes to get the eircode. If you are doing an online registration at a new address, you require an eircode.

We spoke about the length of the ballot paper for the European elections - the scroll that everybody was given. Has the Commission considered going to a two-page format so that half the ballot paper is not hanging off the edge of the table? Is that being considered? Is there any research? You are looking for your position on that bit of paper. I am thinking of the Florida election years ago.

We are going to look at the ballot paper issues and ballot paper design issues. Mr. Ryan knows because they had a look at a two-column paper in the Chair's constituency many years ago. The difficulty is that there were spoiled votes where people voted one, two, three in the first column and one, two, three in the second column. That was the opposite problem to the one in the European Parliament elections.

Again, that can be solved by education too. There were problems with the length of the ballot paper, including with tearing them along the perforated line. Our data suggest that some of the difficulties people had arose from the length of the ballot paper, not knowing who to vote for and all those issues. There were also privacy issues in the booths. The new booths are probably not big enough to cater for a ballot paper long enough to accommodate 28 people. It is like a sheet of toilet roll. This is an issue to bear in mind.

I do not want to be the person who puts this on the table but I will say it anyway. There are some solutions here. One is to make it harder to get on the ballot paper, which I do not think anyone has an appetite for. Alternatively, we could do electronic voting or electronic counting or else double or treble the number of people doing the counting. If we are already finding it difficult to get the number of counters we have now, this option is probably not a viable practical solution. I am not sure there is any appetite for electronic voting or electronic counting either.

The other country in the world that uses PR-STV the way we do is Malta, as the committee will know. That country has just introduced electronic counting and claims it is even more transparent because a photograph is taken of every ballot paper. This means everybody can see every ballot paper if they so wish as well. I am having a look at that option. I spoke to the company that installed this system for the Maltese authorities. It is not something for today or tomorrow, but perhaps down the line, if this issue persists as a problem and no viable solution emerges from a ballot paper design perspective, then it is something we might have a look at.

To add to that point, in terms of the double columns, the legislation provides that it can be a double column and it has been used in the past. One other practical difficulty in this regard, however, is that since we introduced the ballot paper template for visually-impaired voters, this is a standard in terms of a single column layout rather than a double column layout. It is just another practical challenge in respect of moving towards having two columns.

Okay. On the registration process, I remember that years ago there were two different forms, one if people were registering for the first time or one if people were moving constituency. If people are registering for the first time, moving constituencies, so re-registering, or moving within a constituency, is the process as simple for all three possibilities now?

I am glad to hear it. Turning to another point, it is known roughly and approximately when the local elections are going to take place. We know roughly, for example, when the local elections for 2029 are going to take place. It is the same with European elections and presidential elections. There is a bit of a run-in with by-elections because we know that timing too. When general elections are called, though, that is obviously very challenging because it can be a short time to try to put everything in place when there would normally be six months or longer to do so for a by-election or the local elections, for example. Is that challenging as a returning officer? It is not a leading question. How much preparation is there?

It is challenging, but we monitor what is going on. If there is a snap election, then it may take us completely by surprise. We have, though, been planning for the general election since the local and European elections finished. I suppose the biggest difficulty is securing the count centre. If you are trying to book a count centre it is necessary to be able to give people the dates when the count is going to take place. If we are only getting three or four weeks' notice of the date, then that is a significant issue in relation to the count centres. At the moment, certainly, it is causing me a little bit of anxiety as regards the count centre. In fairness, places that are usually used for a count centre are commercial locations used for many other events too. They cannot hold a spot open for me indefinitely, so there comes a crunch point at which I need to be able to say I need the space or I do not.

We manage that and we have not ever had a situation where we have not been able to get somewhere for a count, but it is certainly a challenge. It is unique to the general election because as the Chair says, with the other events we know some time in advance when they are going to be.

Yes. It is for television and radio ads explaining how to check the register, how to vote and encouraging people to get out and vote, which are the three phases. It is much more expensive for us, but this is the cost of doing business, unfortunately. It is cheaper for referendums and the local and European elections because, as the Chair said, there is a much longer lead-in time.

My last question is on posters. Posters are the part of the campaign nobody likes at all. They play a role because when the posters go up everybody knows there is an election on, so they are beneficial in some way. However, it is about the proliferation of them. There are candidates putting up 1,000 or 1,200 posters across a constituency. It is absolutely ridiculous. It should really be limited down. Is the commission doing research work on that?

We sure are. It is one of the big priorities for Dr. O'Sullivan and her team this year. On the one hand there are the environmental issues, the cable ties and so on. Those arguments have been put forward. On the other hand, there are many academics who feel very strongly, like the Chair said, that there is a vast swathe of people who do not know there are elections coming until they start seeing the posters on lamp posts. There is also the suggestion that dropping posters favours incumbents because they tend to be well-known figures and public figures. Particularly where there is a reluctance on the behalf of some candidates, especially women candidates, to go face-to-face canvassing this is an opportunity to get their face out in public. The academic evidence here is incontrovertible that Irish people like to vote for people they know, see or recognise as well, so it is an opportunity for new candidates to get themselves out there. It is not a case of either a feast or a famine. There are many countries which adopt a process where they say candidates cannot put posters all over a constituency or there is a certain part of a town or village where postering is banned. A cap can be introduced on the number of posters of say 200 or 250 rather than 800 or 1,000 where there are no limits right now. Interestingly and anecdotally, some of the greatest regulators of the postering issue in constituencies are Tidy Towns committees because they go to candidates and tell them-----

-----if they put a poster in this town the committee has been trying to beautify for the last six months, no-one is going to vote for them. That kind of regulation seems to work. We hope to have a piece of work on postering. I think a public consultation is intended for this as well to get the views of the public. It appears the people like posters.

On posters, they are so resource-intensive and so expensive to buy and potentially to pay people to put up, as well as the issue of getting volunteers to put them up, that it can be a barrier for new entrants who are not able to match the resources incumbents have. Incumbents may have a stockpile as well and while you have to apportion a cost to them in your returns, effectively you do not have to buy new posters if you are reusing them. There are arguments for and against whether postering favours incumbents.

A lot of newer candidates can sometimes be more proficient at social media than incumbents might necessarily be. Some of them might have advantages there as well. I urge strong reform in this area because even from a safety point of view, volunteers are putting posters up and pedestrians, cyclists and motorists are getting hit by them. It is amazing we have not had more serious issues with them.

I have a few questions. I thank all the staff involved in the election process. They do very long days in the count centres and polling stations, which is very much appreciated. On spoiled votes, are clear rules set out on what constitutes a spoiled vote? Four criteria are listed on the Electoral Commission's website and everything is broken into that. Is it the case that it is just those four criteria and that is it?

There is a uniform approach but, again, there is a discretion exercised by the person doing the adjudication. Certainly, in my constituencies, I do not do all the adjudications. I have deputy returning officers, but we are all operating off the same principles. I would be surprised if there were any significant difference between what one of us decides from the other. We are always trying, insofar as we can, to ensure that the vote is allowed in. It is not a process of excluding votes. It is to try to allow a vote in if we can but if there is a clear reason we cannot, we exclude it. That is what the adjudication process is for. We do it in conjunction with the agents and candidates. We listen to the arguments that are put forward during the adjudication process and we then decide. We are all operating from the same principles as set out, however.

I ask for some clarity on the issue of the 50 m at the entrance to polling places. There is often a little confusion about that. I notice that the Department's language is "entrance to polling places". That means it is not the boundary or curtilage of the building or grounds but the actual entrance to the polling place.

On that issue, we came across many posters within 50 m during the local and European Parliament elections.

This will feature in our post-electoral event review of that particular event . We met the returning officers yesterday. Many of the returning officers are very active in this space with regard to removing posters. Some talk to candidates and ask them to take them down. Otherwise they have a man in a van to remove posters as well but there is a lack of clarity in relation to who is responsible and whether it is the returning officer, the local authority, the Garda or the candidate. Depending on which area one is dealing with there tends to be a different approach. It is probably something we will flag. It is important because this could be key in the general election as well. It is something that should be clarified in advance of a general election.

My perception is that perhaps it was more strictly enforced in the past and there is a little bit of ambiguity as to from where the rules apply and so forth. In terms of the process being fair, one would not want a situation where there was an outcome with one vote in it and someone said "There were posters right outside" and so on. It is an area that needs to be looked at.

I can only speak about my own area. In Dublin city I am very fortunate that the local authority provides me with assistance. In the local and European elections, they had a team of people who went out at 5 a.m. on the morning of the poll and travelled around the city. They took down posters anywhere they were located. For my inspectors who attend the polling stations, their first job when they arrive is to check to see if there are any posters within 50 m. The presiding officers and the supervising officers are advised that they should check as they are entering the polling station. I am aware that quite a number of posters had to be removed. I am very grateful to the local authority for providing two teams of people. If a presiding officer or an inspector observes a poster in a position in which it should not be, this team is contacted. It is a large area to get around but they will get around to it. It is ultimately the responsibility of the Garda but I do not believe it has the resources to be getting involved in the policing of this particular issue. I have put in place my own procedure with the co-operation of the local authority. That may not be the case in other constituencies but that is certainly my practice.

There is also the question on the whole area of misinformation, which may be for the Department or the commission. I have been contacted by constituents who complained about misinformation - not online but in leaflets - and about things that are just not factually correct all. People are quite concerned about this and quite upset about it. Is there any recourse for them at all or is there nothing we can do about it?

Yes. There was also a question I did not get to which was asked by Senator Fitzpatrick earlier regarding Part 4 of the legislation, which was the Electoral Reform Act 2022. There are two main elements in respect of this area, one of which is Part 4 relating to the transparency of political advertising and giving a role to the Electoral Commission in this regard, and the other element is Part 5, which gave a role to the Electoral Commission in tackling misinformation, disinformation, and manipulative and inauthentic behaviour online during electoral events.

On the advertising piece we are making good progress in terms of the commencement of Part 4. The EU introduced a regulation, which is the EU regulation dealing with the targeting and transparency of political advertising. That was agreed at European level in March and has an 18-month implementation period. Now we are working towards bringing forward amendments to Part 4 that would bring us into line with the EU regulation, which will have effect.

In advance of all of that happening, measures are already in place specifically around transparency of advertising under the EU Digital Services Act, DSA, which came into force in February of this year. There are transparency requirements around advertising generally under the DSA and they apply to political advertising as much as any other advertising. Also at EU level there is the code of practice on disinformation that has been signed up to by 43 signatories, including all the major online platforms. That is also in place. The commission's own framework was put in place in advance of the European and local elections and this deals with transparency of advertising, among other things.

On Part 5, we were working with the European Commission to bring forward amendments, primarily to ensure this Part complies with Digital Services Act which has come into force since the Electoral Reform Act 2022. We were required to notify the proposed amendments to the European Commission and that was done in July. There is a standstill period, which, as I said in my opening statement, will expire on 4 October, which I think is next Friday week, to enable the Commission to make comments back on that. That is why that is there.

Returning to my question, if someone receives a leaflet and there is blatant misinformation in it, is there no recourse such a person can take? That is the question I have been asked. This is where constituents get leaflets which contain blatant misinformation. These are not views which they disagree with but is stuff printed as facts which is blatantly untrue. Is there anything they can do about that or is their full recourse just in the ballot box?

The recourse, of course, is in the ballot box but content moderation is difficult in this space. In the white heat of an electoral event, content moderation is a space the Electoral Commission has said it does not particularly want to get into.

With regard to Part 5, we have attempted to refine the definitions to give a role to the Electoral Commission in the space of electoral process, misinformation and disinformation, so clearly things not right in the electoral process. I think Mr. O'Leary has mentioned a case in Germany where people were encouraged to sign their ballot paper and they would be entered into a draw. Clearly, then it becomes invalid. That kind of clear misinformation or disinformation designed to undermine the electoral and democratic processes is what we are attempting to address and give a role to the Electoral Commission in regulating.

Maybe Mr. O'Leary might wish to speak about his own framework in that.

In the absence of any legislative powers, rather than standing idly by for the June elections, we engaged with the social media companies and with the political parties to agree a voluntary framework about how we treat misinformation and disinformation, AI, and online political advertising. In a short couple of weeks, Ms O'Sullivan and her team were able to thrash out a framework with social media companies, and the speed of that was unheralded because once the west coast lawyers get involved in this conversation, things tend to take years. We did it in a couple of weeks and the social media companies were happy to agree a voluntary framework, but it lacks authority and teeth. I know it is the Government's ambition to pass the new Parts 4 and 5 in advance of a general election, but that depends on the timing of the election. Let us see. We may dust that off as well just to see.

The EU action on political advertising goes beyond online political advertising, and that is the plan. It is due to start on 10 October of next year, which, ironically, will be halfway through the presidential election campaign that is likely. In those circumstances, there is a question to be asked as to whether leaflets constitute political advertising and the same arises with posters. Are posters also political advertising? We need to thrash out that detail and, if that is the case, then they fall under the regulatory umbrella of transparency, etc. There may be some form of redress there but we have not seen anything like the detail of that yet as it is a year away. It is, however, something we will be turning our minds to in the months ahead.

I have seen political parties not having the name of the printer on posters, who erected them or whose name it is. There is nothing at all on them.

I thank the witnesses for their attendance and for the work they do in promoting and protecting our democracy, because it is critically important and comes under threat from time to time.

Before we finish, I want to make a point about security at count centres in particular. We have seen an increase in activity among people with certain political views and beliefs who have no respect for authority or for anybody else, and I am very concerned that a count centre is a magnet for politicians from the various constituencies. It is an issue not just for the public and the candidates but for the staff who work there as well. I assume returning officers have some sort of high-level meetings. It is something I would urge them to take account of for the next election. I have seen a deterioration in the behaviour at count centres.

There was concern before the local election count and the European election count. Again, I can talk only for Dublin, but I am lucky in that I get significant co-operation from the Garda and I enjoy a very good relationship with the superintendent and some of his staff. The Garda comes to me with any information it has and once we have analysed what the risks are, we try to take appropriate steps to ensure the count centre will be safe for everybody, including candidates and members of the public. That is under review at all times. I have certainly noticed the trend. I am the city sheriff as well, so I deal with people in many different situations, and I am sure my colleagues throughout the country are taking note of the changes in society and in the behaviour of people when planning their events.