Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

On behalf of the Labour Party I thank all Members who contributed to this debate. The electoral register is the spinal cord of our democratic life. If it is damaged, the body politic is disabled. An accurate electoral register is essential for the accuracy and integrity of our elections. For some time now the Labour Party has been drawing attention to the unprecedented inaccuracy of the current electoral register. Last night, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government acknowledged that the electoral register could be inaccurate by up to 860,000 entries, or 25% of the eligible electorate. It was the first time the Government formally accepted the full scale of the problem.

I was not surprised the Minister refused to accept this Labour Party Private Members' Bill but I had expected that in rejecting it, the Minister would set out in detail the steps the Government will take to correct the register of voters, for which it has ultimate responsibility. Instead, we were treated to one of the most pathetic responses to come from a Minister on Private Members' business. The Minister patronisingly denigrated the Labour Party Bill by claiming it would foster quangos. Coming from a Government which has given the health service to the Health Service Executive and road building to the National Roads Authority and from Ministers who are tripping over each other to divest themselves of their executive powers, that is a bit rich. He blamed local authorities instead of himself for failing to keep the electoral register accurate, clapped himself on the back for sending out a few circulars to the county councils and made a few unspecified, uncosted and unreliable promises about the 2007-2008 register. Nowhere in his reply did he take responsibility for the shambolic state of the electoral register. There was no explanation as to why he or his two predecessors in Government have failed in their duty to ensure the accuracy of the voting register and there was no real commitment to putting it right. I am becoming weary of the way in which the Minister blames local authorities for everything that goes wrong on his watch. He seems to believe that the buck stops with a grade V officer in the county hall and not at the Minister's desk in the Custom House.

He is correct that the House should not have to divide on the issue of the electoral register. However, the Government has had plenty of advance notice that urgent action is needed on the matter but has failed thus far to act. In every debate I remember in this House on electoral legislation — we have had many such debates over the past five years — Members from every party and none have drawn attention to the inaccuracies in the electoral register. The Oireachtas Committee on Environment and Local Government held hearings on the issue. During the many exchanges on electronic voting, the Labour Party argued that the €60 million would have been better spent on correcting the register than on purchasing electoral play stations for the former Ministers for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputies Cullen and Noel Dempsey.

Over the past year, Labour Party Deputies, including Deputy Quinn, have brought practical suggestions to the Government on how an accurate electoral register could be compiled in time for the next general election but none of those proposals has been acted upon. The result is we still have an electoral register in which one in every five entries is wrong. This inaccurate and unreliable electoral register is due to the negligence, inactivity and incompetence of this Government.

The Labour Party is interested in resolving this issue because our people and democracy deserve no less. It could have been resolved with the money misspent on electronic voting. The register could have been updated in parallel with the census process and it will be corrected if this Labour Party Bill is enacted and implemented. However, the best the Minister could do last night was list a number of routine administrative tasks which he portrayed as original political initiatives. He told us all about the wordy circulars and guidelines he plans to issue to local authorities, down to a description of the appendices, none of which tell local authorities anything further to the rules and practices they should already know.

The big idea in the Minister's speech was a new link to the electronic database for the 30,000 deaths recorded in Ireland each year. After nine years in government, the Minister thinks it is a major initiative to remove the names of the deceased from the electoral register. Dare one suggest that they should have been doing this all along? He offered some slight hope that action will be taken to improve the 2007-08 register, on which it is expected the conduct of the next general election will be based. He says the process will start early but does not tell us what that means. He says that local authorities could engage experienced census enumerators to complement local authority staff in the collection of register data. That is a far cry from the kite which the Minister successfully flew at the weekend that the census enumerators would be sent out for a second time to compile a new register. What happened to that idea? Was it just another example of Government by public relations in which a good yarn is spun to a journalist but nothing is done about the problem?

He says he will provide some money — unspecified and uncosted amounts — to local authorities for the compilation of the 2007-08 register. That, at least, is an advance on his attitude of a few short months ago, when he turned down a request for financial assistance from Kildare County Council, which explained to him the difficulties it faced in annually updating the register in an area of rapid development. The Minister has made it very clear that this unqualified extra money for the register will only be available on a once off basis. He appears to imply there will be some extra money available to councils for one year only in order to update the electoral register, whereas there will be money available every year to store the useless electronic voting machines purchased by his predecessor. Is it any wonder that, in a country of unprecedented wealth, the elderly cannot get a proper bed in a hospital when they are ill or find a garda when they are at risk from crime? A Government which, in the computer age, cannot even compile an accurate list of the names and addresses of those over 18 years in a country of only 4 million people, cannot be trusted to run hospitals, the schools and the public services.

If the Minister had given a realistic response to the proposals of the Labour Party, we would not press this Bill to a vote but he has offered nothing. Members from all sides of this House have reiterated that the electoral register on which the conduct of our democracy is based is a shambles and needs urgent correction. However, the Minister has rebuffed every proposal made from these benches with regard to resolving the matter while offering only uncosted and unspecified administrative measures in response. It is simply not good enough. The Labour Party wants Second Stage of the Bill to be put to a vote and asks Members with concerns about the state of the electoral register to vote in favour of it.

See this speech in context