Interest in constitutional referendums has been falling for years, from the 71per cent of the electorate that turned out to vote in 1971 on whether or not the Republic should join the EU to the lowest recorded turnout of 29per cent in the 1996 referendum on bail.
Nor is this problem limited to constitutional matters - turnout is falling in all local, European and Dail elections.
In response, the forthcoming Tipperary South by-election will be held on a Saturday, in the hope that people will use their free time to get out and vote.
The Internet offers a more complete solution: using encryption technology, it should be possible to allow voters to exercise their franchise directly from their home PC or even their mobile phone.
The Department of the Environment is currently examining the possibility of using electronic voting and counting equipment. If it is found to work, a new system may be used in the local government elections in 2004. But even if technology voters will still have to travel to use it.
In last year's US elections, some 200 members of the military used the Internet to vote. They were supplied with a digital certificate on floppy disk, which they used from their home or work PC. Germany may allow Internet voting in 2006 and Estonia plans to allow it in 2003. If the Irish electorate could vote in this way, then turnout rates might return to their previous highs.
But there are problems with Internet voting. For a start, there is a greatly increased possibility of fraud, with indifferent voters simply selling unused electronic voting certificates to the highest bidder, who could then use them as he or she saw fit.
This may already be happening. When vote-auction.com was closed down just before the November 2000 US elections, the vote of a Californian was retailing at $19. It would therefore be hard to convince industry experts, not to mention the public, that the secrecy of the ballot could be preserved online. Even if the technical problems could be overcome, using Internet voting would exacerbate the "digital divide", as those who could vote online might vote in ever larger numbers. As turnout rates rose in technologically connected and knowledgeable sectors of the electorate, rates among the poor and ill-educated might remain at their current low rates. This would further disenfranchise the marginalised such as the 25 per cent of the Irish adult population that is functionally illiterate.
Even if Internet voting remains impractical, the Internet itself may begin to have a significant impact on future elections. At least part of voter apathy may be due to the Oireachtas decision to prohibit the use of the most sophisticated modern tools for reaching a diverse electorate - that is, TV and radio advertising.
This decision is enshrined in section 10(3) of the Radio and Television Act 1988 and its constitutionality has been upheld by the Irish courts, which took the view that "rich men should not be able to buy access to the airwaves to the detriment of their poorer rivals".
The Internet, meanwhile, is not subject to this ban, so while a TV or radio station cannot carry political advertisements, they can be inserted into a streamed webcast or carried as usual on the station's Internet sites. The ban is therefore bound to become highly anomalous, if the Irish electorate ever gets the broadband access to the Internet or domestic digital TV stations which it has been promised. It may then become impossible in practical terms to distinguish between a TV station and a website providing streamed video content on which political advertising is permitted.
The Oireachtas does appear to be taking a practical approach to this problem. TV and radio advertising may be effective, but it is very expensive. The cost of the 2000 elections in the US may have run to $4 billion, with candidates such as George Bush raising around $100million just to get nominated.
Costs in the Republic may never be able to reach these levels, as stringent limitations have been imposed by the Electoral Act 1997. These prevent a candidate in a five-seater constituency spending more than £20,000 and require the registration of political donations.
One of the more important provisions of the Act is that it prevents the spending of "soft money" in Irish elections. "Soft money" is not spent directly by a political candidate, but is spent by his supporters to promote issues with which he is identified or to attack his opponents. Since a candidate does not control and cannot be made liable for this spending, if permitted, it allows any rules on spending limits or campaign finance to be circumvented.
The Internet and digital TV may allow lobbies with an interest in an Irish election to promote candidates of whom they approve and attack those they dislike, by placing advertisements on stations or websites based outside the State, which then broadcast or stream video or audio content into the Republic.
This sort of lobbying can be extremely effective - the National Rifle Association (NRA) in the US, for example, has been able to prevent the imposition of any effective controls on the sale of American firearms, regardless of how many students kill their peers in high school shooting sprees.
Denis Kelleher is a practising barrister and co-author of Information Technology Law in Ireland (Butterworths, Dublin). Website: www.ictlaw.com