Derek McDowell (Labour)

We are entitled to demand that people make the effort to present themselves at a polling station. If one is in County Kerry for the weekend, I do not suppose that it really matters if one calls to the polling station in Sneem to vote in Dublin North-Central, or vice versa. This is a real issue. I ask the Minister to take this opportunity to outline the extent, in his opinion, of the discrepancies on the register of electors. Recent press reports, which I hope are exaggerated, are a source of disquiet. While there have been instances of fraud, my instinct is that most discrepancies are caused by people being registered at two locations by accident. People seek to be registered when they move to a new constituency, but they do not actively cancel their registration at their previous address.