Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)

Amendment No. 27 is very interesting. Amendments Nos. 27 to 30, inclusive, effectively cover the same issue and deal with the matter of automatic registration. They raise very significant difficulties. What is proposed is a system of automatic registration when a person reaches 18 years. There is a problem with the amendment, notwithstanding the fact that automatic registration might be a good route to take. Automatic registration is tantamount to compulsory voter registration, something we have never had. While some people feel it might be good, the matter should be discussed in its own right before taking that route. There are also other more cogent reasons to ask the Deputy to pause and reconsider the matter.

Automatic registration, with an opt-out, as proposed in the amendments, is complex. It is easy to contemplate, but difficult to see how it would operate. For example, what would be the process of securing automatic registration? I was born in Wexford, moved to Dublin where I spent many of my teenage and adult years and subsequently moved to various parts of Wicklow. How would the process of registration follow me as I move around the country? There is no requirement on me as a citizen, who has moved from one part of the country to another on various occasions, to register where I live and there is no process that could relate where I currently live to where I lived at the time of my birth. Most of us were registered as being born in maternity hospitals. While there is a certain attraction to automatic registration, there are practical problems.

Another problem for a voter who has just turned 18 years of age is how he or she would know of the process in place to exercise the automatic opt-out. Which registration authority would receive the automatic registration and how do we know that would be appropriate as young people move around quite significantly in their late teenage years and early 20s? What procedures should young people follow who want to tell a registration authority they do not want to register and what timescale would be allowed for that? A series of issues arise.

I do not wish to be negative. Deputy O'Dowd made the point that voter registration needs to be examined in a more holistic way. Currently, we probably have the worst system of voter registration. Our system goes back to the 19th century and is the responsibility of local authorities. Some of these do the job superbly, some moderately well and some not well at all. Some take it seriously, but others do not. Deputy Boyle mentioned that in our system — it happens in his constituency — local authorities adjacent to each other adopt radically different procedures.

It would not be practical to take this route until we have adopted a different system of voter registration. It may well be we should adopt a different system. I would not knock that. The concept of automatic registration deserves discussion in that context, rather than here. I am sure the amendment was tabled by Deputy O'Dowd with a view to airing that general point. It would not be wise to accept the amendment as a series of practical questions arise from it.

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