9 March, 2024 – An Coimisiún Toghcháin, Ireland’s independent electoral commission has set out the final details of its information campaign which launched on January 25 for the two referendum campaigns and concluded when the polls opened yesterday.

Over the six weeks of the campaign period, An Coimisiún Toghcháin:

• Wrote, designed and printed 2.3m Referendum Booklets for delivery by An Post to homes, care settings, libraries, citizens advice offices, post offices and to Irish personnel serving overseas.
• Held dozens of in-person campaign information events in different communities across ten counties.
• Answered hundreds of questions in almost 60 local and national media interviews – TV, Radio, print and online media, including Irish language media.
• Saw 770,000 page visits to the information pages of our bilingual referendum website and more than 20,000 downloads of our Referendum Information Booklet.
• Responded to over 1,200 public queries directly to An Coimisiún by phone, by email and by post.
• Created and delivered a national public awareness advertising campaign which focused on getting people registered to vote and making them aware of the 8 March Referendums.
• Created and delivered a specific social media campaign to make people aware of how they sourced their referendums information.
• On polling day observed in person voting taking place across 100 individual polling stations in every county of Ireland. 

An Coimisiún Toghchain, as Ireland’s independent electoral commission is very pleased to have completed our first electoral event since our establishment in February 2023. We will be preparing a post-election report on this vote within 6 months, in line with the provisions of the Electoral Reform Act 2022.

In recent weeks, An Coimisiún also commenced the process of preparing our campaign for June’s Local, European, and Limerick Mayoral elections and the independent information campaign for the planned Referendum on the same date.

ENDS

For further information, please contact:

Brian Dawson, Communications and Public Engagement Manager, 

An Coimisiún Toghcháin, The Electoral Commission,

086 0749344 Brian.dawson@electoralcommission.ie 

– ENDS-

Editor’s Note:

An Coimisiún Toghcháin, The Electoral Commission

An Coimisiún Toghcháin is a statutory, independent body, established on 9 February 2023 with responsibility for a broad range of electoral functions set out in the Electoral Reform Act 2022. An Coimisiún is central to Ireland’s electoral system, carrying out a range of existing electoral functions, including:

• the decision-making, oversight, secretariat and supporting services associated with explaining the subject matter of referendum proposals, the promotion of public awareness of referendums and encouragement of the electorate to vote at referendum polls; and
• the conducting of reviews and making reports in relation to the constituencies for the election of members to the Dáil and the election of members to the European Parliament.
• responsibility for the registration of political parties.
• making reports for the Minister in relation to local electoral boundaries. 

An Coimisiún is also tasked with several new electoral roles, including:

• preparing research programmes and conducting research on electoral policy and procedure, and providing advice, as required, to the Minister and Government.
• promoting public awareness of, and working to increase public participation in the State’s electoral and democratic processes through education and information programmes;
• overseeing the modernised Electoral Register, making recommendations and setting standards in relation to its maintenance and updating;
• the regulation of online paid-for political advertising, ensuring transparency in respect of online political advertisements during the period of an election or referendum campaign; (Legislation not yet commenced)
• responsibility for the investigation and monitoring of online disinformation, online misinformation and manipulative or inauthentic behaviour online during election campaign periods, as well as functions to prevent manipulative or inauthentic behaviours online. (Legislation not yet commenced)
• the preparation of ex-post reports on the administration of electoral events.

It is anticipated that the initial set of functions assigned to An Coimisiún will be expanded upon as it builds capacity and expertise.