Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

The Deputy's party shares some of the responsibility for this mess. The slide happened since 1977 when Jack Lynch abolished rates. No correction was made and many Deputies now on the Opposition benches could have made it but chose not to do so. It is spread around the place.

However, this Government must take the lion's share of that burden. It has been in Government for 18 of the past 20 years and it sat on the fence, particularly in recent years. I make some concession to Deputy Gilmore's point. The huge population shifts in recent years resulted in a crying need for attention to the register of electors, but this attention was not given. Responsibility was left with the local authorities but this was responsibility without resources. How could local authorities ever be expected to cope with the huge shifts in population? The job was much easier in olden days when rate collectors visited every house in the State.

Now that this has changed, a central agency with complete responsibility for the register across the State is absolutely essential.

I get mixed messages from local authorities. Some co-operate well with elected representatives in sending out and publishing their lists of deletions but others do not. For example, a letter from South Dublin County Council in response to a request for the list of names of persons removed from the register said, "In this connection I wish to inform you that, based on advice received from the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner, the council is not in a position to provide you with the requested information as it could give rise to data protection implications". That is nonsense. Why is there such a level of confusion among local authorities? Are they messing around? Is it someone playing God, or something close to it, with the register of electors and telling elected representatives to take a running jump? It is completely unacceptable and demonstrates the need for a central authority to deal with these issues.

There has been a significant increase in the register of electors in my Louth constituency. While there have been more than 8,000 deletions, of which 3,035 were notable, more than 12,000 net additions have been made to the register. I know there has been some innuendo as to why that might happen; I see the same is happening in Donegal. I wish we could get to the bottom of it and sort it out rather than engaging in mud-slinging and innuendo. It needs to be resolved. I note that one polling station in Dundalk has had an increase of more than 37%. However, when I examined the area I found that two substantial new housing schemes had been developed in the area. This offered some explanation of why such an increase would take place.

Some local authorities have visited libraries and other places to encourage people to check the register. However, one could argue that libraries are the wrong venue as people visiting those tend to be literate and therefore up to speed with matters such as checking that their names are on the register. One could argue that local authorities should have visited post offices and shopping centres where their presence would be more widely recognised and would have offered significant help and assistance to voters.

While I welcome the legislation and acknowledge the extended deadline has been helpful, it could have been managed better. In discussion with Deputy Ó Snodaigh earlier, I argued that one of the reasons in the past for lengthy lead-in times for registers of electors was their manual construction. Nowadays registers can be checked by the push of a button. More time could have been afforded to ensure this was done properly. We will support this amending legislation. I hope the Minister will undertake to establish a central agency with responsibility for the register in the not too distant future.

The North was earlier cited as an example. However, the North got it badly wrong and wiped hundreds of thousands of people off the register. Luckily enough, my colleagues lobbied those foreign ministers who visit the place from time to time and they accepted the option and changed the register.

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