Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I was intrigued to hear that the Bill introduced by my party was unworkable. All I heard was that our Bill would establish an independent quango. I paid a visit to Ethiopia last week as part of a delegation from the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs. That country is in a state of considerable electoral chaos because both the Government and the Opposition have claimed victory in the general election and many members of the Opposition are now in prison. The most clearly articulated demand of the Opposition is for a visibly independent national electoral board. This is the core of the Bill proposed in the other House by my party. This Bill would move away from any hints of peculiar budgetary priorities by local authorities. Drawing up the register is one of a number of obligations imposed on local authorities but in a constrained budgetary situation, it is far from top of the list of priorities for county and city managers.

As an individual who has been presented with copies of registers by local authorities during all my years as a Member of the Houses of the Oireachtas, I was always intrigued by the lack of any sense of the need to close circuits. A form anonymously stuck through the doorway of my house warned me that I could not vote if I did not register to do so. That form reminded me of two considerations in this affair. The first relates to the people who are deprived of the vote because they did not register to vote or disappeared off the register.

The second, and of far greater concern, is the number of people who are on the register but should not be. For many years, there was indifference to this problem, but the suspicion that a particular party, which developed its expertise north of the Border, is now using it in the South may have concentrated minds. If anything dubious is suggested, this type of remark is calculated to generate extraordinary levels of pompous indignation from at least one senior party official.

We could argue forever about the precise mechanisms to be used to provide a good, up-to-date, reliable and secure electoral register, but why has this situation occurred when the Government presides in a time of extraordinary affluence? Until 15 years ago, the excuse was that the country could only apply a certain amount of funds, but democracy is the bedrock of how we work. I should not need to say this in a House of the Oireachtas. Therefore, the most important mechanism or institution of the State is the process by which democracy works. When Ministers of a variety of political views get worked up about the need to defend the institutions of the State against attack, one agrees with them. These are the institutions we set up to govern the State, but what happens if the Government allows the most fundamental institution to rot and fall behind?

For a long time, mobility was limited in this country. People either stayed where they were or left the country. There was a bit of movement between Cork and Dublin, as the Minister of State is well aware since his father partook of that mobility, but it was usually a once-off movement. People moved to somewhere, stayed there, got married, moved to another place and did not move much more. Now, we have a fluidly migrant population. More young people live away from home than was the case 20 years ago. There are gated communities to which no one can gain access. Three or four different categories of people are moving into and out of the country, some of whom are entitled to vote in local elections, European elections and general elections while some of whom are not entitled to vote in presidential elections.

After so many years, why is the format of putting together the register haphazard, uneven and dependent on the whims and efforts of city and county managers? The Government does not need to accept all of the Opposition's suggestions on how to do this, but it must give Opposition Members and a significant number of Government backbenchers a sense that the same things will be done better. Adding €100,000 here and there to a budget that is inadequate will not work, nor will hoping that a few more people will be recruited and city and county managers, who tell us that they do not have enough money, will allocate a significant part of their budgets because we have made a fuss. Many other measures will not work.

One of Ireland's fundamental policy malaises is the degree to which we wonder why, after identifying pathetic or no resource allocations, something only happens in a half-hearted and sporadic way. Who will travel——