Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)

I thank Deputies and would like to take up a number of the points made. Turning to Deputy Boyle's contribution, I have said several times that this must be taken out of the political maw and that we need an electoral commission that will take over the totality of this. I agree with the comment that this should not be an issue for one side of the House. I would welcome a debate in that regard.

Incidentally, I also commented in precisely the same way as Deputy Boyle on the probable impact of all this on previous elections. We must remember that in 2002 the electoral register on which we were all elected had one third of a million more people named on it than should have been named. As was said in some of the argument and analysis subsequently, the electoral register here has been out of kilter by as many as 860,000 people. My calculation at the early part of this, which is a matter of record, was that there would be of the order of 300,000 to 400,000 errors on the register. The names of more than one quarter of a million people were not on the register whose names should have been on it. As it happens, there were half a million people in respect of whom there were deletions and corrections. At least 300,000 plus of those should not have been on the register, including tens of thousands of names of people who had passed away and whose names were not removed from the register. In the city of Waterford, the names of 1,400 people who were deceased were still on the register. I regard that as a scandal and that is why far from being either obstructive or difficult, I am the first Minister ever to take this matter on. No Minister has ever taken it on because it has been regarded as a hot potato. Everybody knows that once one gets into the job of correcting the voter register, one must get into the area of deletions which make politicians unpopular.

Deputies Catherine Murphy and Morgan referred to field work. It has been a challenge for local authorities and it has been difficult for them because of the sheer volume of change. A most cogent argument in this regard was made by Deputy Gregory. Far from being blind or deaf to the point he made, I agree with him and I will return to that point. On this occasion and for the first time ever, central government funds have been made available to the local authorities specifically to do the job on the register. I am delighted with the consensus emerging in this House that we need to look at the role of local authorities. The position in law — I am not shirking responsibility in this matter — is that local authorities are responsible for this job. They have argued with some validity that the job is massive and they have had a problem with resources.

Deputy Boyle made a very valid point about the inconsistency between local authorities. I am not sure if the Deputy is aware of this and I am not faulting him but before this process was undertaken, I sat down with the county managers' group to identify the problem with the inconsistency between one local authority and another. Deputy Boyle is quite right in that the distances between local authorities is stunning. That is why this year, before this process started, and before I got funding for the local authorities, I also changed the guidelines. For the first time ever, remarkably, we had a consistent set of guidelines.

I will take up the positive points, although there will inevitably be a little point scoring and who could blame us. I would do the same if I was on the far side the House. Deputies O'Dowd, Morgan, Catherine Murphy, Gregory and Boyle touched on the issue of some central format. We will have to commit to moving to an independent electoral commission and I have said that several times. The electoral commission will have to handle all aspects of this, including the boundaries, the construction of the register, the basis on which the register is constructed, the voting system, the form of voting used and, to go back to Deputy Gregory's point, the form of voter verification. I have more difficulty registering for residential parking in my local authority than I have getting on the register.

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