THE GOVERNMENT has taken the first steps to set up an electoral commission which will have responsibility for drawing up constituency boundaries, maintaining the electoral register, and acting as the State's watchdog for political funding.
The UCD political scientist, Prof Richard Sinnott, has been commissioned to conduct a study that looks at the present arrangements in Ireland and examines the models used in other countries.
Prof Sinnott and his team, one of whom is a lawyer specialising in electoral law, is expected to report back to Minister for the Environment John Gormley by the end of the summer.
The new commission is expected to replace the Dáil Constituency Commission and the Standards in Public Office Commission (Sipo). It will also have responsibility for maintaining the electoral register.
The Coalition partners - especially the Green Party - have pinned a number of promises they have made on the new body with its rolled-up functions. Those promises include the equitable division of Dáil boundaries, more transparent policing of political funding, and an accurate electoral register. The Green Party's call for an end to corporate donations will also fall under its remit.
However, The Irish Times understands that the commission may not be in operation until 2011 or 2012 because of the complexities involved. As many as 16 or 17 separate pieces of legislation will need to be reviewed or repealed in order to establish the authority.
Mr Gormley, replying to the recent Sipo report on party funding in 2007, said that issue was one for the electoral commission, adding that preparatory steps for the commission were "well advanced".
The programme for government promises that the new entity will have power to revise constituency boundaries, take charge of "a new national rolling electoral register" and assume the functions of Sipo.
In a clear reference to the controversy that followed the splitting of Leitrim ahead of last year's general election, the programme says: "We will, in its terms of reference, stress the importance of avoiding, where at all possible, the division of small counties or small parts of counties into separate constituencies."
The Labour Party claims Mr Gormley and the Government are using the establishment of the proposed commission as a convenient catch-all excuse for explaining away inadequacies in political funding legislation.
A Labour spokesman said that when Sipo published its report on party funding last week, it called - for the second year in a row - for the system of funding to be made more transparent. "The Government has twice ignored that advice. And every time Labour brings the matter up we are told that it is a matter for the electoral commission. That is years away. There seems no urgency to reform the system," he said.