Electoral Reform committee  I think mandatory voting probably addresses the symptom rather than the cause. If there's a lack of interest in politics, which manifests itself in people refusing to vote, forcing them to vote doesn't necessarily make them interested in politics. The phenomenon in Australia know

Electoral Reform committee  Generally speaking, countries with PR systems do have more women in Parliament than countries that don't. Being confident that this is cause and effect is a different matter. Maybe it's just that the countries are different, that their whole political culture is different. Irel

Electoral Reform committee  Within each constituency there's a reasonable degree of proportionality, especially in the larger ones, such as the five-seat constituencies. In three-seat ones, in particular, you might not get such proportional results, but what nearly always happens is that, simply on the law

Electoral Reform committee  I think it's worked in different ways. In the early years what happened is when people voted for a party, they'd vote for, really, all the candidates of that party; they'd vote very much on party lines and wouldn't vote for the other big party. Nowadays, it's much more mixed, so

Electoral Reform committee  I'd just add the caveat I mentioned before, which was that we shouldn't use the electoral system to explain too much. As my colleague says, parties' fortunes wax and wane, and that probably doesn't have very much to do with the electoral system. It would have happened under any e

Electoral Reform committee  I think we're seeing the waning of large parties right across Europe, and the Irish ones are no different. We've seen it in Britain with first past the post.

Electoral Reform committee  The voters certainly do sometimes reject the government. The best example was the 2011 election, when the outgoing government dropped from 40% of the votes to 17% of the votes. The voters made their feelings very clear on that occasion. Now it is true that, with coalition governm

Electoral Reform committee  Yes, it changes things a bit. Parties in their manifestos say what they would like to do, but after the election, if there is a coalition government, that's just their initial bargaining position. No party can expect to get everything of what it promised. In a way, that's part of

Electoral Reform committee  One could argue exactly the same in a first past the post system, inasmuch as one party got a majority and implemented its program, but it might only have 30% of the vote, or 35% of the vote, or 38% of the vote. Is that the will of the people if it's implemented what 62% of the p

Electoral Reform committee  On voter satisfaction I think we've had two referendums to replace the current system with other systems. In both cases those referendums were lost. The voters said they wanted to keep the current system. There have been various opinion polls and research exercises carried out in

Electoral Reform committee  The system had been in place for 30 or 40 years, yes.

Electoral Reform committee  We are constrained by the constitutional requirements. In fact, there was a referendum back in the 1960s on allowing for a higher level of representation in rural areas, thinly populated areas, than in urban ones. But that was politically motivated because, for the reason I menti

Electoral Reform committee  Majorities were never all that common, I suppose, but we've had plenty of majority governments, and then we've had plenty of governments that have had almost a majority, but not quite, but it didn't seem to matter because the opposition was sufficiently fragmented that the govern

Electoral Reform committee  That's a real ballot from the Wicklow constituency.

Electoral Reform committee  These days the minimum is three, as set by the constitution, and the maximum these days is five, though in the past we've had constituencies up to nine seats.