Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I await the Minister of State's response. Who could disagree with anything in the motion? One hopes the Minister of State will accept the Opposition's views but that carries optimism too far. I do not want a hope for the best or a promise that the Government will try better in future, but a structured, funded and staffed plan to ensure a dynamically active and continuous review of the register instead of passing out a form once per year and waiting to see what happens.

All sorts of phantom figures appeared on the register at an apartment complex in my constituency of Cork South Central. One man of straight-laced habits learned that according to the electoral register, a woman was living with him. He was most disturbed by this fact but was even more disturbed when he went to vote at 9 a.m. and discovered that the woman had already voted. The Minister of State has the resources to identify the extent to which such anecdotes are true. If the Government leaves the register in a messy state, one must assume it has identified some advantage. Presumably, the advantage is the fact that older people tend to vote for Fianna Fáil in greater numbers than younger people. Therefore, the best course of action would be to keep youngsters off the register while retaining older people who vote for Fianna Fáil, do not move and are easily registered.