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

If I understood Dr. Muiris MacCárthaigh correctly, he did not feel there was a great need to set up a commission. We need to fix a system that is not working. As a practising politician, I recognise that there are major problems with the electoral register throughout the country. After each election we are informed of the numerous errors that occurred in every single register. Sometimes people who have been on the electoral register for 40, 50 or 60 years turn up at a polling station to find their names are no longer on the register. This is due to the fact that the system of compiling the register is not a rolling one. It has to start from scratch every year from about September or October within the local authority. Local authorities do not have the resources to upgrade and supply an accurate register of electors. There is a need for a single independent body, a centralised electoral commission, to compile the register.

There would be a greater degree of accuracy with an electoral register than with the current system. I am not criticising local authorities because they have done the best possible job in the circumstances. The care of an electoral register should not be in their remit because it has placed an undue burden on staff who are not properly trained to compile a register of electors. I have spoken to local authority staff who work in the area of compiling the register and they feel the same. Have those people been spoken to? Clerks, and maybe junior clerks, are brought in from time to time to help with the register and would not have a great deal of experience in that area. The politician always faces the anger on polling day and for a few days afterwards if people find their names are not on the register. It can also cause a great deal of confusion at the polling station if there are inaccuracies in the register on the day. People are advised to check the register well in advance, but very few do.

There is an electoral commission in Northern Ireland which was established nearly 40 years ago and is working very satisfactorily. There is no obligation on people to vote, but it is compulsory to register to vote there. That is a very good system. They say the electoral register in Northern Ireland does not have the same problems as we have in the South. I met a person recently who told me they were on six registers. I know it would be illegal but it is possible that a person in those circumstances could have voted six times. That person would have been breaking the law and they knew that but that should not be the case. A person should be registered to vote only once and at one location. That crops up all the time and there are thousands of people whose names are duplicated on the register. We will not have an accurate register until we eliminate that type of error.

The administration of the electoral system has been piecemeal and has been lacking a cohesive approach. For a long time, I have felt that an independent body, free from Government or political interference, would be more acceptable to everybody and to all political parties. A CEO, who should not be a member of the Civil Service, perhaps with the same powers as a District Court or a High Court judge, should be an electoral commissioner and special terms of reference should be issued to that person. We need to put in place a system-----