Joe McHugh (Fine Gael)

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 3, between lines 12 and 13, to insert the following new subsection:

"(2) In this Act, the 'Act of 1992' means the Electoral Act 1992.".

During the last local elections and previously in the general election it came to the attention of many of us that there is quite an amount of fraud with regard to the electoral register. Two weeks ago a report in The Sunday Tribune alleged that there were 800,000 names on the electoral register that did not have a vote. These were names of people who were either deceased or, as happens in many cases, names which were duplicated.

My proposal, which is an aside to the independent commission on the boundaries, is that the Minister should give serious consideration to introducing phased legislation to attach the vote to a person's PPS number. The PPS system is already in place and it would not complicate the system too much to ask that electoral registers be replicated on the basis of those numbers throughout the country. This is already happening to good effect in the Six Counties.

In the last local election a gentleman telephoned me two hours before the booths closed to tell me he had five votes and to ask where he should vote. He had votes in Letterkenny and in the Glenties and Milford areas.