Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I wish to share time with Deputies Costello and Burton. I welcome the opportunity to move Second Stage of this Labour Party Private Members' Bill, which aims to revamp the manner in which the electoral register is compiled and maintained and to take measures to stamp out electoral fraud. The purpose of the Electoral Registration Commissioner Bill 2005, is to establish the office of the electoral registration commissioner and to set out the duties of that office regarding the supervision of the performance by registration authorities of their obligations in the preparation and publication of electoral registers. In addition, the Bill provides for access by registration authorities to information held by third parties on persons resident within their registration areas and makes provision for the use of personal public service, PPS, numbers in connection with the registration of electors and with establishing the identity of persons applying for ballot papers at elections. I will return to the detailed provisions of the Bill.

This is probably one of the most important issues to be considered by the House before the next general election. It is a vitally important issue involving the integrity of our electoral system. The electoral register is in a shambles. Politicians of all parties make regular use of it and they know by experience it is incomplete and out of date. Virtually everyone in politics can recount experiences of canvassing in housing estates or blocks of flats where the names on the register bear little relationship to those living in these houses or apartments. I could give many examples from my constituency or from those of many of my colleagues. I will give just one example drawn to my attention by my colleague, Councillor Dominic Hannigan, who has reported entire estates of new homes with house after house having no registered voters. Rath Lodge in Ashbourne, reports Councillor Hannigan, has almost 200 homes but only a handful of registered voters. On a recent canvass in the area, he distributed scores or registration forms to residents who had never been offered them before.

Problems with the electoral register are not new. For as long I have been in politics the electoral register has been a problem, with errors and inaccuracies common. However, the scale of the errors and inaccuracies is new and unprecedented. Again this is acknowledged across all parties. Nobody knows how inaccurate is the register. Research carried out by political analyst, Mr. Odran Flynn, and published in The Sunday Tribune suggested the current register may be wrong by up to as many as 800,000 names. This includes people who have moved into an area but have never been included on the register, those who are dead, people who are entitled to vote but are not on the register, people who are double registered and those registered in constituencies in which they have no entitlement to a vote. Mr. Flynn considered a number of factors when coming to this figure. He points out that the most recently published electoral register has 3.129 million people on it. This is estimated to be 300,000 more than the number of Irish and British adult citizens in the State entitled to be on the register. However, 300,000 would assume every citizen in the State is on the register. This is rarely the case and the international norm would be to expect 80% to 85% of the electorate to be on the register. On this basis he estimates the register may be wrong by anything between 719,000 and 860,000.

Mr. Flynn may have overestimated the scale of the problem. However, even if Mr. Flynn is only half right, or even a quarter right, we still have a huge problem. If the estimate is only half right, then the electoral register is out by 400,000. If the estimate is only a quarter right, the register is out by 200,000, well more than the population of Cork city. Such a level of inaccuracy, gives rise to two principal areas of concern: it deprives a significant number of people of the democratic right to vote and provides potential for electoral fraud. The outcome of the next general election may be determined by the outcome in a handful of constituencies. It is unacceptable that the will of the people could be frustrated by those who are prepared to take advantage of the shambolic state of the register to perpetrate electoral fraud.

Those involved in politics know that no real and sustained effort is being made by local authorities, which are charged with maintaining the register, to keep the register accurate and current. It is not a core activity of local authorities, does not rate highly on their lists of priorities and they have not been given the finance or resources to adequately do the job. By way of example I refer to an e-mail I received earlier today, one of the many I received on this issue. It obviously struck a chord with people who have had difficulties registering themselves or who know about the inaccuracies in the register. My correspondent moved home a few months ago and dropped into the local county council office to have his address changed on the electoral register. He was told the relevant forms were not available but the county council took his name and address and said he would be contacted. Three months later no contact had been made so he sourced the form himself and sent it to the relevant office. By way of contrast he described the energy of the television licence inspectors who were onto him like a shot. He writes:

I have never held a TV licence in my own name before so I was not on their records. Two months after moving into my new abode I got a letter from An Post's TV licence services office stating that according to their computer database my address was not covered by a TV licence and urging me to buy one before I got a knock on the door.

The person rightly points out that when it comes to the collection of money the agencies of the State have no difficulty maintaining an accurate register of who lives where and of tracking them down with efficiency, but when it comes to establishing their entitlement to participate in our democratic system by voting a different standard and energy is applied.

It would have taken only a fraction of the almost €60 million wasted on an insecure, unreliable and unwanted electronic voting system, to provide the local authorities with the resources, facilities and modern technology to guarantee a register that is as accurate as possible. The process of updating the register has not kept pace with housing developments and with changes in the workforce and in work patterns. Since the last general election 300,000 new houses have been built. People are frequently out at work when local authority officials call to check voter registration. In addition, there has been a major increase in private renting, a sector with a high turnover of tenants. The growth of so-called "gated communities", flats and housing developments with no access to outsiders has created a new problem for those compiling the register.

I am not suggesting the Government has made a deliberate decision to allow the electoral register to fall into such disarray but it has failed in the duty to ensure that we have an accurate and reliable register. There may be some involved in Irish politics who are unscrupulous enough to take advantage of the electoral register to perpetrate electoral fraud. In every recent general election the destination of seats in some constituencies was determined by a handful of votes. We must not allow a situation to develop whereby the genuine wish of the electorate can be frustrated by electoral fraud using an inaccurate electoral register.

Virtually from the introduction of partition until recent years electoral fraud was a major problem in Northern Ireland, but the authorities there have taken effective steps to curb this immoral, illegal and anti-democratic practice. A key part of this strategy has involved a more robust approach to the compilation of the electoral register. For example, I understand that following a major review of the system for registering voters, the number of entries on the electoral register fell by almost 20% in some constituencies. In the Falls ward in Belfast the electoral register was found to be 25% oversubscribed. Northern Ireland now operates a form of "rolling electoral register", the integrity of which is constantly checked.

The situation in regard to the electoral register in this State has gradually been getting worse. Despite concern in all political parties the Government has taken no action to improve the reliability and accuracy of the register. Indeed, the Government refused to avail of the unique opportunity offered by this weekend's census to update the register on a national basis. The Labour Party had suggested to the Government, prior to the conduct of the census, that census enumerators could and should be asked to carry a second form for the purpose of updating the electoral register. My colleague Deputy Quinn told the House that this could be done in a way which would not infringe the confidentiality of the census. Enumerators could present a second voter registration form to households and have it completed and returned separately to local authorities.

The Government has missed a great opportunity to correct the voter register using the census process. Every single household in the country is being called to by enumerators, who will repeatedly call back to those households until all the forms are returned. This could have been the means to secure an accurate register but the Government failed to act. There were reports over the weekend that the Government was considering sending census enumerators back into the field to update the register and that the Minister would bring proposals to Government today — I am interested to hear the Minister's response in that regard. That proposal would be a welcome development and would deal with the problem of the register for next year's election. However, it is not a permanent solution. There is a considerable gap between the taking of each census whereas the register needs to be updated annually.

The Bill which the Labour Party proposes to deal with the problem of the electoral register on a permanent basis contains a number of features. The purpose of the Bill is to establish, at national level, the independent office of electoral registration commissioner. It spells out the duties of the commissioner in supervising the performance by local authorities of their statutory duties in preparing the electoral register. Specifically, the functions of the commissioner will be to supervise generally, co-ordinate, monitor and report on the performance by local authorities of their duties relating to the registration of electors; to carry out registration duties on behalf of local authorities, with their agreement or where the local authorities are in default of their statutory obligations; to make recommendations to the Minister on amendments to the law on electoral registration to secure a more comprehensive and timely registration of electors while safeguarding the integrity of the poll; to promote public awareness and information campaigns in regard to electoral registration requirements; and to provide local authorities with advisory, technical support and other ancillary services in connection with registration duties.

The overall objectives of the commissioner are to ensure the comprehensive, accurate and timely registration of persons entitled to be registered as electors in an efficient and economical manner and to ensure that all necessary action is taken to prevent or detect the registration of those who are not entitled to be so registered and the registration of persons as electors in more than one registration area.

The expenses of the commissioner are to be met by way of a financial contribution to be paid each year to the commissioner by the local authorities. The commissioner is required to ensure that his or her costs of operations are kept to a minimum and are not excessive. In default of payment by a registration authority of any amount owed by it, the amount involved will be deducted from any sums payable to that authority by any Department and will instead be paid to the commissioner.

The commissioner will be entitled to issue advice and recommendations to local authorities to ensure the smooth and efficient registration of electors and to secure uniformity of procedure throughout the State. He or she will also be enabled to provide services, assistance and other support. If the commissioner believes a local authority has failed to perform its registration duties, or has performed those duties in an unsatisfactory manner, and the response of the authority to any advice or recommendations issued or services, assistance or support offered to it is inadequate, the commissioner will be entitled to give a direction to the authority to carry out any necessary ameliorative action within a specified period. It is the duty of a registration authority to comply with directions given to it by the commissioner. If it fails to comply with a direction, the commissioner can then carry out the necessary action himself or herself. The local authority will be responsible for the costs of any such action.

The Bill updates the provisions of the Electoral Act 1992 relating to the co-operation a local authority can expect from citizens in the electoral registration process and the information it can require, both from electors and third parties. To be satisfied as to the entitlement of a person to be registered as an elector, a local authority can require information sufficient to establish the public service identity of that person and his or her ordinary residence. "Public service identity" is defined by reference to the Social Welfare Acts and essentially consists of a person's PPS number, together with his or her name, including previous names, date and place of birth, sex, address and nationality.

A local authority will also be entitled to require certain listed bodies to give the authority information relating to the names, addresses, ages, nationalities and PPS numbers of persons resident within its area. The bodies listed include Departments, the OPW, local authorities, the Health Service Executive, statutory bodies and agencies, State-owned companies and financial institutions regulated by the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority; the Private Residential Tenancies Board and any landlord who is obliged to register with the board under the Residential Tenancies Act 2004; and prescribed utility undertakings that supply energy, communications or broadcasting services to the public.

It is stipulated that information given to a registration authority may be used in the performance of electoral registration duties and for no other purpose. A local authority may share the personal PPS number and public service identity of registered electors with the commissioner and with other registration authorities to prevent multiple registrations. The information may also be shared with presiding officers at polling stations at election time. However, local authorities may not publish a person's PPS number or public service identity in or in connection with a register of electors or share that information with any other public body or any other person. The Bill provides also that documents relating to PPS numbers may be specified by the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government as documents that a returning officer or presiding officer may request a person applying for a ballot paper to produce. That system would ensure the PPS number is used, first, for the purposes of registering the voter in the first place and, second, as a control of possible voter fraud at the polling stage.

In the longer term, the Labour Party believes we need to establish an independent electoral commission that will have full responsibility for all aspects of elections and referendums. However, the immediate priority that must be faced before the next general election is restoring regularity and accuracy to the electoral register. It is simply unthinkable that we could waltz into it with an electoral register that is up to 20% inaccurate, has great potential for electoral fraud, of which the Government has repeatedly been warned in this House and in the media, and about which it has taken no action.

We have heard on many occasions, in exchanges I have had directly with the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government during questions on the subject, and in others that my party colleagues have had with the Taoiseach and Tánaiste on the Order of Business, a general sense of agreement from the Government side that there is a problem with the electoral register and that something will have to be done about it. However, we have seen no concrete steps taken by the Government to deal with the inaccuracy of it. We simply cannot have the next general election conducted with the register in its current shambolic state. I ask the Minister, when responding, to tell us what the Government will do about it, and if it intends to act. I appeal to him to accept the Labour Party Bill.

See this speech in context