Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)

I am grateful to the Deputy for his remarks. The Deputy asked about the use of the PPS numbers. I have made the point several times that PPS numbers are primarily for use by the Department of Social and Family Affairs and were established for a particular purpose. We have approximately 5 million PPS numbers in the country and approximately 3.1 million voters. To convert PPS numbers to a voting registration system would be fraught with all sorts of difficulties, not least because PPS numbers do not necessarily reflect current address. I am sure many Members who have a PPS number do not necessarily have their most up to date address recorded for it.

I mentioned some of the problems associated with using PPS numbers earlier, probably when Deputy McCormack was not here. Between 1 May 2004 and 1 November 2006 some 295,771 numbers were issued to people from the ten new EU member states alone. PPS numbers are carried with the person from place to place, but they do not have to recognise where a person currently lives or whether the person is in the country. The PPS number is, so to speak, the equivalent of a person's barcode and is not designed for that purpose.

I do not wish to be negative on the issue of registration. The Deputy asked what I think is the right way to go about the matter. I think we need a rolling register, something which was mentioned by Deputy Morgan. The resources currently going into producing what can at best be regarded as a flawed, sometimes seriously flawed, register, should be taken and invested into creating a rolling register. As I said on Committee Stage, the PPS number could be very useful for verification when a person's name is being entered on the register. For example, the PPS number is currently used when people renew their passports. The idea would be to use it for the purpose of verification on registration.

Also, if we had a system where PPS numbers were cleaned up and it was possible to use them for voter registration, we could also use the REACH system to allow people to vote on line. However, the idea that we can have an automatic system where every 18 year old will be allowed to vote, without putting into operation a structure to manage that, is not viable.

Deputy Morgan was right in the point he made earlier. In the North of Ireland where insurance numbers, which are the equivalent of PPS numbers, are used, a massive and hugely costly effort was made to prevent electoral fraud, and the national insurance numbers were introduced for that reason. There, they had to move to a system of a rolling register. To pass this amendment without putting into operation the infrastructure required to support it would create major difficulties, not least the practical difficulty of in what constituency a person would be registered.

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