Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

I hope the Minister accepts that reform of the electoral rolls is not rocket science. It is a comparatively simple undertaking, and using personal public service numbers does not raise significant data-sharing issues. The electoral rolls close a considerable time in advance of an election taking place. Surely a little cross-checking could be done at that point at national level and if there were duplicate PPS numbers one would simply write to the individuals advising them of this and giving them a chance to remove themselves from the register in one location? That could be done a long time in advance of the election. It would allow us to deal with the 300,000, 800,000 or whatever number of people who are registered in two or more locations. It could be done comparatively simply. Would the Minister consider doing this relatively quickly and bring in the necessary regulations to ensure we can have a lot more confidence in who is on the register and that people are not registered in several locations?

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