Paul Coghlan (Fine Gael)

I support Senator Brian Hayes's comments with regard to the electoral register, fraud and so forth. The Minister said recently that there are approximately 300,000 inaccuracies in the register. That has the potential to affect a significant number of seats. It is a basic requirement of presiding officers to ensure that ballots are franked. Sadly, in too many parts of the country unstamped ballots were given to genuine voters. Perhaps polling clerks were not paying enough attention in some instances. However, it is such an essential element of their function that where there were breaches of that regulation on the part of presiding officers, steps should be taken to ensure they are not reappointed. Perhaps in the past some of them were doddering or did it deliberately but it is a basic requirement and they should not be reappointed.

The Official Languages Act contains the daft proposal, to which Senator O'Toole and I have referred previously, that all documents be translated into Irish, regardless of whether it is necessary. It is mandatory under the Act, of course, and we must respect that. All of us are interested in the promotion of the Irish language but we know these documents are not requested and are being dumped. The point was made previously that these could be provided on disk or whatever when requested rather than go through the unnecessary and wasteful expenditure of having everything printed, merely to be dumped. It is a national scandal. If the Government wishes, it is something Senator O'Toole and I can rectify in our Official Languages (Amendment) Bill which is on the Order Paper. We will await word in that regard.