James Bannon (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and his staff. It is imperative the Government honours its commitment to set up an electoral commission to safeguard electoral integrity and to provide an independent, well-structured and staffed office to oversee certain aspects of election functions. As the previous speaker said, Ireland's electoral register is patently incapable of being updated and maintained within the existing structure. It comes into focus at election time when we see the number of errors. In one election, there was somewhere in the region of 8,000 errors in the electoral register. That needs to be addressed to bring greater integrity to the quality of the register.

Setting up an independent electoral commission is urgent. It was promised in the past but was never delivered. There is need for a single body, similar to that in Northern Ireland which Deputy Stanley mentioned, to foster public confidence in the whole democratic process.

We all remember what happened with the e-voting machines in 2004. Approximately €54 million was squandered and 7,500 machines became obsolete. We do not want that to happen again.

I hope it will not happen.