The intention of the Government, with the support of Fine Gael if not the Labour Party, to ban opinion polls during the final week before an election raises numerous questions. It has all the hallmarks of a knee-jerk reaction to the publication of a recent TG4/MRBI opinion poll in the latter stages of the Tipperary South by-election campaign.
Rushing any decision in either politics or business is not sound management, but this situation is different. Here we have politicians coming together, in what many will see as a short-term cosmetic alliance, and for what purpose? To ban political opinion polls which both parties have used extensively when it suited them in the past.
This is being done ostensibly in the public interest, but each party has some sort of bee in its bonnet about the findings or timing of that opinion poll.
In regard to our Tipperary South opinion poll, the overall indicators were that had the by-election taken place on June 23rd, when the survey was completed, Tom Hayes (Fine Gael) would have topped the poll with support in the mid-30s and would have been elected on the third count, on transfers initially from Denis Landy (Labour) and subsequently from Michael Maguire (Fianna Fail).
This is precisely what happened in the election.
For Fianna Fail to blame the poll findings for its second poor performance is an unimpressive attempt to avoid responsibility. The fact that the MRBI figure a week before the election was 3.5 per cent below the election figure indicates to me that the party made up ground during the final week.
This figure is within the statistical tolerance of the sample, and absolute precision has no place in sample survey research.
The fact that Fine Gael, at the Committee Stage of the Electoral Amendment Bill in the Dail last week, proposed an amendment to prohibit opinion polls implies that some senior people in the party were unhappy with the TG4 poll. If this is so, the rationale for dissatisfaction is more complex and considerably less obvious than was the case in the Fianna Fail context.
As I see it, the Fine Gael amendment is contradictory, in that it has the potential to be detrimental to its own interests.
The party has a well-structured internal organisation technically capable of conducting private opinion polls on its own behalf.
If the amendment is passed in its present format, the party will be unable to undertake private polling during the final week of campaigns, or if the Taoiseach's wish is implemented, during the final 10 days.
From the professional research viewpoint there are two dimensions to be considered, the taking and the publication of political opinion polls.
One of the reasons a similar proposal was withdrawn in the early 1990s was that its introduction could be classified as an unconstitutional limitation on freedom of expression.
Prohibiting the publication of opinion polls does not, in my opinion, contravene any constitutional provision, but it does raise a number of relevant issues, the significance and relevance of which may not have been fully considered.
To take decisions in today's society, whether in a professional, social or everyday context, relevant information is needed as a backdrop, a procedure which ensures that the best possible decision is taken.
There is no better source of valid information available to electors before an election than the opinions of fellow electors, and this source, based on professionally conducted research, cannot be seen to be other than democratic.
However, I also accept that the timing of the publication of late opinion polls could influence some electors, and therefore I feel that a brief moratorium on publication in the final days of a campaign would meet the case.
The proposer of the Fine Gael amendment is reported to have said: "There is a point where the public can be left to make up their own minds rather than be told how other people are voting".
This statement is another of numerous recent misinterpretations of what political opinion polling is all about.
Polls do not measure voting behaviour as this statement claims; they are concerned solely with public opinion on the day. Nor do they make predictions, as most politicians appear to assume.
They measure opinion on the day, and there is no basis whatever for the frequently claimed assumption that the figure is inaccurate because it was not identical to that which emerged in an election seven or 10 days later.
Furthermore, if the public are to be deprived of the opinions of other electors, they will be left with nothing other than the doorstep inducements and baseless claims of the politicians themselves.
Regular, but not too frequent, opinion polls in the pre-election context have brought vitality and vigour to many campaigns in the past and have become a notable ingredient in the overall political mix.
Publication is almost exclusively a matter for the various media interests which commission opinion polls on a regular basis. The research profession is primarily concerned with the operation and methods of those polls.
Finally, if the amendment on publication becomes law, there will be at least one favourable spin-off. We will no longer be asked to endure the disclosure of spurious figures from fictitious opinion polls, a practice which has characterised at least two election campaigns in the past.
Jack Jones is chairman of the Market Research Bureau of Ireland