There is a recount of 750,000 ballot papers in Cork this morning.

Senator Grace O'Sullivan is involved.

It is almost a week since people cast their ballots but it will probably be the weekend before we get a result.

Do I hear e-voting?

Do we need to look at this? We have talked about an electoral commission to look at this. There are 750,000 ballot papers and each is over 2 ft. long. There are approximately 40,000 spoiled ballot papers. There has to be a better system.

One could ask why people spoil their votes.

There is a significant issue with how this process works. There are 240 staff who will be there for seven days counting votes.

They will be paid.

We need to set up an electoral commission and to examine the issue. It has been 20 years since we spoke about e-voting. We should have a debate about the system.

I am not giving up my peann luaidhe.

There were also plebiscites in three cities, two of which failed. The scenario in Cork was unusual. We asked for a plebiscite of the people of Cork on the question of a lord mayor but when we extended the boundary we never asked the people in a plebiscite - we just did it. There is a contradiction in this. There is a view that the executive could extend the boundary by law but that it could, when it suited it, ask the people for their view on the mayoralty. There is a failing in the system. I congratulate Limerick on putting the city and county together into one local authority, which gives it a real voice. There is population density now and they are moving into a new space, which is the directly elected mayor. They have moved light years ahead of Cork and Waterford by giving themselves the potential to work together. I never saw the logic of having two local authorities in one county. There has been an extension to a boundary on which nobody voted and, in the mayoral plebiscite, people asked why they were being asked to vote on the issue when they were not asked to vote on the extension of the boundary. We need to have a comprehensive look at local government, how it works and how it is funded. The vote failed in Cork because people thought it would be too expensive. If they went for a merger we would have one county manager, one executive-----

They would probably need to work together more too.

-----and fewer councillors. There would be less expense on account of everyone working together. We did not ask the people on the big decision to extend the boundary, which we did in this House, but they should have been asked. The plebiscite should not have been about the mayoralty but about having one local authority. Since we asked the wrong question, we got the wrong decision.

Perhaps we need another debate on that.