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PEOPLE ACROSS IRELAND are heading to the polls this morning as General Election 2020 gets underway.
As the country decides who will lead the next Government, thousands of Presiding Officers and polling staff have set up shop at polling stations in every constituency with counting due to get underway first thing Sunday morning.
Who gets these coveted, well-paid roles staffing polling stations and tallying votes, though?
Here’s how it works.
Officers & Counters
The Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government estimates there will be 6,500 Presiding Officers employed for General Election 2020. That’s doesn’t include staff employed as ‘counters’ from Sunday onwards.
It’s up to constituency Returning Officers to employ staff ahead of any election.
Each constituency’s Returning Officer appoints Presiding Officers to work at polling stations. So, the more polling stations in a constituency the more Presiding Officers are needed.
Jenny Bourgoise, who works with Dublin City Returning Officer Joseph Burke, told TheJournal.ie that her office generally puts an application call-out for both polling staff and count centre staff four to five weeks before an election.
The General Election was called on 14 January so Bourgoise posted the application for staff online immediately after.
Staff are required for both polling stations on Election Day and count centres throughout Ireland.
Anyone is free to apply once an election rolls around, said Bourgoise. This year, over 1,000 people applied for election work. “It’s the biggest [number] we’ve ever had,” she said.
In terms of who gets these jobs it’s generally a first-come, first-served scenario. The earlier you apply, the likelier you are to get election work. Successful applicants are then trained up by The Returning Officer staff.
At polling stations, Presiding Officers are joined by polling staff. Presiding Officers, said Bourgoise, tend to be experienced people who’ve done the job before.
In Dublin City, a total of 1,102 people have been employed ahead of Saturday’s vote to staff polling stations, distribute polling cards and cross voters’ names off their lists.
On Saturday, early shift polling staff will arrive at polling stations at 6:30am and finish at 10:30pm. Staff can’t leave the polling station but can take several 20-minute breaks if and when it’s quiet.
On Sunday, at count centres around Ireland, Presiding Officers and “counters” – some of whom staffed polling stations the previous day – will get to work, opening ballot boxes and tallying votes.
These are the people you’ll see emptying votes onto long, wooden tables come count day.
Polling clerks on election day are paid €367 for their 16 hours. For Presiding Officers, it’s €485 per day.
Counters at count centres are paid €272 for the first 12 hours each day and €26 per hour after that.
Rates of pay are set down by the Department of Finance and apply to election staff across the country.
Bourgoise estimates than in Dublin City’s electoral area, about 20% of polling staff at who’ll be at the RDS this Sunday are active or retired Dublin City Council staff, many of whom are supervisors on the day.
It requires a bit of experience to get that job, she said. In total, in the RDS on Sunday, there will 350 people tallying votes.
Said Bourgoise: “You need a bit of a head on you for counting and checking.”
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Save 25min but less frequent and cancelled stoppes ah yea brilliant
An effort to link train arrival times to bus departure times would be a good start if these guys have any interest in more people travelling on trains.
It would be a great idea if both bus eireann and Irish rail both linked their bus and train timetables especially in the country they’d both get more customers and it would be needed in Kerry for example.
Disaster the 5:40am train that arrived into Dublin at 8:45 – now 6:30 arriving at 9:30 its a joke no explanation
Where’s that train leaving from?? – changing the train to arrive in dublin after 9am makes no sense at all!
Michael its the Tralee train I agree its ridiculous
They never kept up with the needs of modern Ireland. And the fares are too expensive.
They couldn’t be more wrong the 15:15 from Ennis to limerick is still at the platform
Limerick to Galway.
Between a rock and a hard place.
Poverty and crime to rain and grime.
25 minutes .. Great! Except for the fact that they cancelled my train and will now not get home 2 hours later than I normally do
Still takes nearly 3 hours to get to Galway. 24th slowest out of 28 countries in europe.
missed the 12.20 cork Dublin this morning as i forgot the times were changing. i wasn’t the only one stuck there for 50 mins til the next one left. Train took 10 mins longer than last weekend too…. improved efficiency my a$$!!
Part of the problem is also the high fares and old rail / station infrastructure and lack of electrification. By relying on diesel, train fares are prone to rising commodity prices. Also, the shortage of rail-cars apparently to cut costs means overcrowding on many trains – something few would be prepared to endure. Further, the lack of enough overpasses.
One less train on the Dublin-Waterford line means one less chance of running into Willie Middleton and his cronies. A good thing.
More of a chance of bumping into him with less trips as he will have less choice increasing yours of meeting him
Who’s he?
Ok how much are the tickets going up by now to justify the time saved,extra 5 euro?
Who’s Willie Middleton…Kate’s uncle?
Meanwhile over at Amiens Street (sorry, Connolly) one train less to Sligo and no change in journey times.
No doubt the oleaginous Barry Kenny (any relation?) will be giving us some flannel about this being an improvement.
They are also missing a separate timetable for kildare to Dublin.
credit where merited and a cursory look sees my journey Dublin to Ballinasloe is now just 1 hour 30 minutes at a cost of 14.99 which to me is excellent.
and Dublin-Cork now regularly two hours 30. That’s considerable improvement.
this new service is a complete joke train running late nearly every day can they get anything right
Dublin Sligo route change is pathetic. The original 5pm and 7pm made no sense for people finishing work at 5pm and now merging both into a 6pm will make the difficulty of finding a seat even worse! Maybe if they cut the journey time on this route instead and actually invested in a second line the usage might go up. Two and a half hours to travel 200km on a train is beyond belief in today’s day and age …
have your say