Mary O'Rourke (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)

I am sorry for the Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

If we are to be lumped into another constituency, that is fair enough. We will go where we are sent. If we are part of the North-West constituency we will be glad to participate as that constituency in the forthcoming European election. All of these changes are useful tidying-up procedures which have to be carried out, and fair dues to the Minister for getting at the things that have to be done. Before now, all assenters had to come together at one time in one room if they supported an independent candidate, but not any more. There are measures here to deal with this.

There is a point I would like to bring up which is not in the Bill. I should not have signalled it was not in the Bill, as the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will want to strike me down, but I hope he will not. There is a huge hole in the midst of the election process, namely the electoral register. Every attempt made to compile an electoral register or bring about a new dawn in the compilation of electoral registers does not succeed. We are told it is up to the would-be voter to place him or herself on the register. There are advertisements and sexy jingles on the radio which tell one to go to the post office, the Garda or the town hall and put down one's name. Essentially it is one's own responsibility to do so. It is also one of the responsibilities of the local authority to compile a register. Leading up to the 2007 general election, the county councils belatedly got a handle on it, and employed people for this task. There was a very good young woman in Westmeath County Council, but she had a whole county in front of her, involving big towns, big movements of people in and out of areas and huge numbers of houses. Yet it was the people who went around canvassing, who would ask whether Tom was on the register because he was 19 since last March — or 25 since last March — who would find that Tom had never been registered. If one tells the person it is his or her own job to register, that does not cut the mustard. People want to know why they are not on this mysterious register even though they have been living in the same place for the last 25 years.

As elected Deputies who got here by hook or by crook, by hard work or in any other way — and very honoured I am to be here, and I thank the voters of Longford-Westmeath who sent me — we have to get a grip on the electoral registers. We are facing local and European elections next June, and it is now almost October. There has been a desultory effort by some local officials to get people out and about, but it has been sporadic and haphazard. It almost amounts to a scandal that we cannot have some system for compiling the electoral register. Surely in our time of technological revolution we should be able to achieve this. We all have our BlackBerrys and our e-mail accounts. We can speak to our first cousin in Australia at the drop of the hat, and he can see that we have moved the couch in the living room because he is looking in. It is amazing. Yet we have not yet devised a method to streamline the electoral register. The Joint Committee on the Environment, Heritage and Local Government has been considering the system in Northern Ireland, which has registration offices in the major towns. This seems to put a shape on the collection and compilation of the data and its insertion into the electoral register.

If a person is found voting twice he or she is subject to huge penalties. There are major court cases, and rightly so. As Deputies know, a person can be on as many registers as he or she likes but can only vote once. Yet we seem to regard the gaps in our electoral register quite blithely. I do not think this is good enough. We are all citizens of the land and we are all entitled to vote. Despite the fact that it is the responsibility of the individual citizen to put his or her name down, that is never thought of until quite late in the process, and then there is a run to the Garda station to have one's name verified and entered on the register. By that point the process is quite burdensome, and it is difficult to sort out the information and ensure that it gets in. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government is failing in his duty. He should consider giving the duty of overseeing the correct compilation of electoral registers to one of his Ministers of State.

I am aware the Leas-Cheann Comhairle has given me leeway on this issue, but it is in connection with the Bill as it is to do with voting. It is about getting people on district councils, town councils and county councils to deal with the matter before the upcoming European elections. If you are not in you cannot win, and if one is not in the register one cannot vote. Surely it is not beyond the wit of man or woman to introduce a system for compiling the electoral register. I hope the estimable civil servants who are here with the Minister will take some heed of me. As we practitioners know, there is nothing to beat being in the field. I knock on a door thinking a house will be favourable to me, and then I find three members of the family cannot vote because they are not on the register. I go off dashed, and they go off thinking I have somehow deprived them of their votes. In this way the story goes on and on. We are all aware that on the day of voting one gets frantic telephone calls from people who say they were on the register for the last 95 occasions — or certainly 20 occasions — and suddenly some gremlin has removed them. This is the unkindest cut of all. One tells them it is the fault of the computer system and they were removed accidentally, but they think there is a dark plot to remove them from the register.

I welcome the Bill and the tidying-up changes facilitated by it. My firm belief is that the current system is far better than Tullymandering or whatever we used to have. Whatever the inequities shown up by bruised Members talking about how the changes will be detrimental to their constituencies, the fact remains that this is a far better way to do it than on the whim of one person who wants to decide what is best for everyone in the country. I welcome the independence of the commission, the commitment of the people on it, and its results, despite the effect they may have on particular constituencies. One cannot cherry-pick the results and say one does not want the changes implemented in Limerick, Longford-Westmeath or Dublin North. It does not work like that. It is a jigsaw and all the pieces must fit together, thereby presenting, I hope, a coherent whole in the set of electoral standards.

However, coupled with my approval of the Bill and my comments in favour of it, I condemn the state of the electoral register and the inactivity of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government in dealing with the problem, apart from saying, in a lofty manner, that it is a job for the county councils. Lofty manners do not put names on electoral registers, which takes hard graft, hard work and application to the job in hand. While it is not possible to have a foolproof electoral register I urge a very detailed assessment of how an up-to-date voting register can be put in place.

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