Michael Kitt (Fianna Fail)

I support Senator O'Rourke's comments about the need for a new and better system of compiling the electoral register. Such a system is necessary if we are to ensure people are not omitted from the register. We need to prevent people from registering to vote five times, as in the case mentioned by Senator McHugh. Rate collectors, who are often much-maligned, no longer have a role in this regard. Not only did the collectors call from house to house, but many of them called to primary schools to get details of people who had left the school five or six years earlier and might still have been living in the area.

We need to consider a different way of compiling the register. Senator Browne has suggested a system based on ID cards. Under such a system, a person who is working in Dublin would be able to vote for a candidate in Carlow or Galway, for example. I suggested during the Second Stage debate that a data collection form, similar to the census form, could be distributed to every house so that all residents over the age of 18 could be registered to vote. Although the current system is quite tolerant — it allows people to register until three weeks before the polling date — the register of electors continues to have many errors. Many people are disappointed to find in the last week of an election campaign that they are not registered to vote. We need to try to find a way of improving the entire system.