The time is now to cast the last votes in the Seanad election.
Postal voting for 49 seats on 7 vocational and university panels has been ongoing since mid-January and counting will begin on Wednesday.
So, who has a vote?
The Seanad, which is the upper house of Houses of the Oireachtas, has a closed voting system.
Unlike general elections where everyone on the register gets to vote, voting for Senadóirí is restricted to a subset of the voting population, some college graduates, TDs, outgoing Senators and councillors elected to local authorities.
College senators
Under Bunreacht na hÉireann, where the rules are set out for the Seanad Elections, 3 seats are set aside for the National University of Ireland and three for the University of Dublin, otherwise known as Trinity College.
Under the rules, only graduates of these institutions get to vote to elect these Senators. (Honorary degrees holders are not included).
Recognising the unfairness of this system, a referendum to expand the electorate to include all third level graduates took place 46 years ago.
The Seventh Amendment vote was held in July 1979, and passed by 92% to 8%.
However, no moves were taken to action the results of that referendum until last year, 45 years later.
That came after a graduate of the University of Limerick took a case that ended up in the Supreme Court.
As a result, this January's Seanad election is the last in which only NUI and Trinity graduates get to vote. The franchise will be expanded to graduates of all of the country's recognised third level institutions for the next election, due in 2030.
This in itself remains a point of serious debate, however, as the rest of the country's adults who are not third level graduates are still excluded.
Vocational panels
43 of the 60 Senators are elected to 5 vocational panels. These panels are designed to give political representation to different groups and sectors of Irish society.
They are the Cultural and Educational, the Agricultural, the Labour, the Industrial and Commercial and the Administrative panels.
Voting for these positions is also restricted. You must be an outgoing Senator, one of the 949 members of the countries’ local authorities, or an elected member of the Dáil to qualify to vote.
Councillors return their votes by post and while those who work in Leinster House can place their votes in boxes, they are all ultimately returned by registered post too.
Campaign
The election campaign for the Seanad has been under way for months, but really stepped up in intensity once the General Election was out of the way.
Throughout the period prior to Christmas and in the last few weeks, candidates for the vocational panel seats have been traversing the country meeting with councillors in their homes, farms and businesses seeking their votes.
University candidates have been busy contacting their electorate through posting out leaflets asking for their vote and in some cases attending hustings.
All eligible registered voters received their ballots by registered post in recent weeks.
Count
Voting closes this week and counting begins. The NUI will accept votes by post from roughly 112,000 graduates until 11am on Wednesday and the count will begin immediately in the RDS in Dublin.
Voting in the University of Dublin (Trinity) panel also closes at 11am on Wednesday. However, the count there begins at 9am that morning in the Examination Hall on the Trinity Campus.
The first results from the University panels are expected on Thursday.
In the case of the vocational panels voting closes next Thursday at 11am. The count which takes place in the Member’s Restaurant in Leinster House will commence immediately.
The first results are expected later that evening, but a number of days of counting will take place. Final results should be known by Monday or Tuesday.
Taoiseach's 11
That’s not the full story, however. The upper house does have 60 seats and as stated at the outset, 49 are filled through the electoral process.
Under the Constitution the remaining 11 Senators are for the Taoiseach of the day to nominate.
That ensures that the Government will always have a majority in the upper house, which is important when it is trying to get legislation through.
Míchéal Martin will have to decide who he favours for a seat, whether they be upcoming young government politicians or stalwarts who lost out in the General Election, and of course Fine Gael will also get some candidates included.
The Taoiseach may also nominate members who have particular interests or represent particular groups who would not otherwise be represented politically in the Oireachtas.
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