Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)

I welcome the amendments tabled by Deputy Gilmore and the Minister, Deputy Roche. I had a meeting with the manager of South Dublin County Council two weeks before the publication of the first draft register. I expressed my concerns about how the process was progressing in that area. I had received anecdotal evidence that people were not being called to by field workers. I also outlined the difficulties I had with not knowing who had been added to or removed from the register. I asked the manager if it would be possible for elected representatives to get a list of those deleted from the register. He said there might be a data protection problem with this.

When the draft register was published, I could see the difficulties immediately and I will give some examples. The Knockmore (2) register covers the Cushlawn area and there were 750 deletions. While there were 200 additions, 600 new housing units had been built and there should have been additions to the register rather than a net decrease of 750. Cushlawn Park is a local authority estate and no one had called to the door on behalf of the franchise office in more than half the houses I called to. Two weeks before the draft register was published, we received evidence of children going around with forms. We raised this with the manager and he said there was no way this would have been agreed to. It was suggested that perhaps local political parties were doing this.

Jobstown has 5,000 houses and 1,700 names were deleted from the register there, even though Russell Square is a development of 500 new housing units. Although there are 3,000 names on the Knockmore (1) register, it contained more than 1,400 deletions. Most of these areas contain local authority housing. I asked the manager how this could happen when the people living there are paying rent to the local authority. I accept what the Minister said regarding his guidelines to local authorities that they should pay attention to areas where a disproportionate amount of deletions were taking place. There were 2,200 deletions in one area in the Dublin Mid-West constituency. However, no alarm bells were going off within the franchise section of the local authority. They seemed to think they were doing great work and were in denial that a problem existed. I visited Russell Square last Saturday and no one knew that they had been taken off the electoral register. People were happy to be returned to it.

There are clear problems and we need more time. My local authority is not putting additional resources into areas where there clearly are problems. One can look at the socioeconomic background of the area and see there is a problem. In other areas, with older populations and with more expensive houses, it is understandable there will not be a huge amount of new couples moving to it. However, in areas where new affordable housing is being provided more people should have been added to the register, but this was not happening. The areas I have listed are ones with low turnout at local, European and Dáil elections. One will often hear people speaking about the low turnout in those areas, but people cannot vote if they are not included on the register.

I contacted the data protection agency and received different information depending on who I spoke with. At one point I was told information on the deletion of names from the electoral register could not be given to elected representatives. I was told it was no longer in the public domain. That is nonsense. One can compare the old register with the new one and deduce the deletions. One can get the register in either hard copy or on disk. Unfortunately, I did not have the resources to compare them as one was in a different format to the other.

I spoke with the deputy commissioner at the data protection agency and she said she did not have a problem with elected representatives receiving a list of those deleted. I asked if I could get a written reply to that effect, but I did not have the time to do so before the deadline — which has since been extended — ran out. I would like the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner to give its view on this. South Dublin County Council was using data protection concerns as an excuse for not releasing the information to me. I mentioned this to Deputy Rabbitte and he was as concerned about it as I was.

We want a list of those deleted because it is easier to go through it than going through the register. Deputy Catherine Murphy mentioned the gaps in the register which were apparent due to the absence of certain house numbers. I will have a better idea of who the families are when I see the names of those who have been deleted rather than simply the number of their house. This is why I want the list.

I welcome the additional time that has been given to dealing with this issue. However, local authorities need to accept that there are problems with the registers. Groups in my constituency have been working on this. The Tallaght Partnership went to the local shopping centre to try and add people to the register. The Tallaght west childhood development group was also knocking on doors.

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