Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses. I have read their submission and it made for interesting reading. I do not want to dwell too much on the past but nor do I want to look too much into the future. From the deliberations with both panels today, it is clear that something is going to happen. There is a commitment in the programme for Government to establish some sort of electoral reform. There is a genuine commitment to examine it, albeit how it happens is another day's work. I want to bring us to the present. I saw a statutory notice in a local paper which related to my own local authority in respect of an application to the registrar to strike off a number of people. It so happened that on the same day I received from an elderly woman of 80 years a note to say she had received a letter to say she was no longer registered at her address or able to live there. She had lived there for 48 years and her son and his wife had come to live with her, put an extension onto the house and joined the register. As a result, the local authority presumed the older or other person had died. It was a presumption but there was no basis for it. I was told initially that she would have to make an application because there had been a statutory process of notice in all the papers. I saw it in Carlow and in a number of provincial papers where it was advertised. This exercise happened only in the past few weeks. After making a bit of a fuss, the local authority reluctantly – it was an effort – agreed to put her back on. However, it said that technically she should be giving evidence that she was in her home. It is a mess and the electoral register is in a mess. Subsequently, I made inquiries with a number of local authorities which told me they had no obligation in law or on any other basis to do outreach anymore.

We used to have officials who called to doors or took samples to make checks but none of that is happening in local authorities which say they have no funding. Nevertheless, a number of budgets I looked at provide such funding. The line on funding needs to be clarified. Is there money from central government for local authorities or do the latter set aside money for it? We have a situation in which it is not a priority for most of the 31 local authorities and that is an issue I ask the witnesses to address immediately. Perhaps when they go back to the office today, they might raise the matter with the head of the franchise section within the Department. A circular should be issued to all 31 local authority chief executives stating clearly that they are obliged to get out there and engage. If it is a resource issue, let us address that. Let us hear why, however, local authorities are not engaging and doing field work door-to-door, which is important, or some other form of work. We will have a local election in a few months so this work is important. I ask for a commitment from the officials to engage with the chief executives of the 31 local authorities in the coming week to provide them with additional funding or to ensure they prioritise within their budgets the cleaning up of registers of electors. They are totally out of date. People who are dead remain on the register ten years later. Other people are duplicated on the same register within the same local electoral ward. It is incumbent on us to ensure the register is as clean as possible, in particular as we go into two elections in May.