Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)

If I may make the point, the on-line access was never made available previously. This is an improvement which was introduced this year. I am smiling inwardly because one of the great silver bullet solutions suggested was to put the entire national register on a single computer. In my view, that route would really cause a problem.

The whole point and purpose of our work as politicians is to check the draft register and to find flaws in the field work. The problem to date has been that there has never been any field work done — it has been hit and miss up to date. The Deputy is correct on the point about the draft register and the deletions list. If there is an area in her constituency where she is of the view there have been wholesale deletions, I refer her to the point made by Deputy Gilmore where he made a cross reference to wholesale deletions by the local authority. I suggest she write to her local authority as I will be writing to my county councillors in that area.

Deputy Gilmore raised a point which I did not address, about people excluding themselves from the register. He asked whether a person has a right to exclude themselves from the register. All the issues in the law relating to the voting register outline the responsibilities of councils but the responsibilities of citizens are not outlined. The Act is silent, by and large, except in section 133(1), which deals with the information which a person supplies. However, the Act only deals with the situation where a person furnishes false information in a claim for correction to a draft register. It deals with somebody who is trying to stuff the register, to fraudulently enter a name on the register. There is nothing in the legislation which states a citizen must register to vote. Deputy Gilmore's point arose because there is some evidence to which I referred last night, that there are areas where people simply do not wish to put their names on the register and they have excluded themselves from the register.

This comes back to the point made by Deputy Catherine Murphy about the opt-in or opt-out nature of the register. The form has been made simpler this year than it was last year when a person was required to double-tick forms. I have given people the right to tick either to opt in or opt out, if they want the issue of confidentiality to be dealt with. I return to the point Deputy Gilmore was making. The law is silent on whether the citizen has a responsibility to vote. We have never assumed the citizen has that responsibility. I have always believed getting on the register to be part and parcel of one's responsibilities as a citizen. We have had a debate on a directly parallel issue where we spoke of people having the right to spoil their vote on polling day.

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