Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

I warmly welcome the Electoral Registration Commissioner Bill 2005 and congratulate my colleague, Deputy Gilmore, for introducing it in the House. I cannot see any good reason the Government should not simply adopt it, move it to Committee Stage as soon as possible and bring it through the House. By this time next year the general election may well be over. There may be many citizens who would dearly like to have a say, perhaps in removing the Government in particular, and who will not get the opportunity given the shambolic nature of the current electoral register. I commend Deputy Gilmore for the attention he has drawn to this, in particular over the past year.

I recall two discussions on Dublin City Council in which all local politicians expressed a strong viewpoint, the first on the issue of dogs and the second on the electoral register. Every one of us was an expert on both issues and virtually everybody contributed. Even ten or 12 years ago there were grave and growing concerns about alleged corruption of the register in high density estates in Dublin. I remember one colleague in particular, Councillor Eamonn O'Brien, who continuously raised this problem which, he believed, was partly based on the fact that often the registrars were fearful at times of entering certain areas such as tower blocks to invigilate the existing electoral roll. It is no wonder that at different elections there were serious allegations that some individuals had been prepared to vote early and often, and took advantage of the failure of the local authority to maintain a decent electoral roll.

We politicians, probably more than most other groups, deeply need that register to function. Most of us who have been in this House for a while tend to want to keep in touch with electors. We are given some facility to do so. One of our most valuable roles is that we constantly report, as we probably all have done today, to different estates and areas of our constituencies.

It is a great handicap that the register, even of long-standing settled estates, contains the names of people who are dead. Today I heard somebody state the name of a person who has been dead for 15 years who is still clearly named in the register, which is totally unacceptable.

Even if the huge figures concerning the corruption of the current register are an exaggeration and one accepts the minimum figure of 200,000 for the forthcoming general election, I was once elected by managing to get ahead of another candidate by 19 votes, so it is clear that 200,000 votes across 42 constituencies will prove important.

Many colleagues have drawn attention to the particular problem we encounter with new estates. My constituency is a vast urban district of 20,000 or 25,000. Nearly all of the residents live in high-density apartments. Although there was a good turnout in the local elections, I noted that the newer estates and the high-density estates were very difficult to reach, not least of course, as other colleagues like Deputies Burton and Gilmore mentioned, because these are gated communities. It is difficult, if not impossible, for a hard-working politician to maintain a relationship with a gated community. Given that many of the apartments in such gated communities are rented, it is virtually impossible to keep a database of one's constituents in order to serve them. There is a special necessity, particularly in the case of these urban areas. Whereas a rural colleague mentioned that it is so much more difficult in modern life to be as aware of one's neighbours as one would have been in years gone by, the nature of modern urban development makes it virtually impossible.

In my view there will be a good turnout at the next election. It will be like the local elections. Many people are in the long grass and will come out to remove the Minister of State, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, and the rest of the Government. They did so in the local elections and they are sharpening the pencils and getting ready.

One of the issues last year was that there were many young people telling us in the last two or three weeks before the local elections that they were not on the register and, as Deputy Catherine Murphy stated, were devastated because they could not vote for the first time. They were really upset and their parents came to us, but we could not get them on the supplementary roll because the time limit had passed. The information campaign had not been strong enough either.

For those who genuinely wish to turn out, it is distressing that we will let them down by having a bad register. It may well suit the Minister of State to have a corrupt register because it may reduce severely the number of people who might be voting for the first time and who might have a strong mind to vote against the Government.

I commend my colleague, Deputy Quinn, who has raised this issue repeatedly in the context of the census. Approximately 2,000 enumerators visited houses and apartments recently, as per their statutory duty, to deliver census forms. That would have provided a useful opportunity to reform the register, perhaps by adopting Deputy Gilmore's legislation. I also commend Deputy Gilmore for proposing a strong role for the commissioner and a strengthened invigilation role for local authorities so that they will do their job, given it is clear many of them have not done so.

Australia has had an electoral commissioner for more than 20 years, although voting is compulsory there. Voting should be compulsory everywhere. Over the past two decades the electoral commission in Australia has worked well and the country has experienced high turnouts. The UK has also taken a serious look at that.

The electoral register should be co-ordinated with various other databases such as the post office database which is 100% accurate, and the ESB and Bord Gáis networks. Deputy Gilmore's proposal would enable us to do that and that is why it is valuable.

See this speech in context