Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)

Exactly. I have changed my address several times, as many of us have done. There is no automatic way for the PPS number system to note that one has changed one's address, or moved in or out of the country. I accept that Senator Bannon's amendments are well-intended, but they are simply not practical. They would not work for the reasons I have given.

Over 250,000 people from the ten new EU member states have been added to the PPS number system since 1 May 2004. Some of them have come to this country, worked for six or seven months and left again. Such people do not necessarily stay at the same address. If they are over the age of 18, they are entitled to be on the register of electors and to vote in certain elections, although not in Dáil elections, referendums or presidential elections. The idea that the PPS number system can be used to solve this problem is false and mistaken. If it was operating successfully elsewhere, it would be operating here.

The North of Ireland has been mentioned on several occasions in the context of this debate. The authorities there stood down the entire register of electors in that jurisdiction, in effect, as Senator Brady said. They then invested tens of millions of pounds in the development of a new register. At the end of that process, approximately 85% of people in Northern Ireland over the age of 18 were registered. There was chaos because hundreds of thousands of people had been disenfranchised.

The fascinating and attractive proposition that people should be automatically registered to vote when they reach the age of 18 has been made by some speakers. Such a system could not be brought into operation, however, for practical reasons. Even if we had a device, such as some form of tracking system, which would allow such records to be kept, we would still need a debate on the concept of compulsory registration. As the issue does not arise — we do not have such a tracking mechanism — it is an argument for another day.

I was born in one part of County Wexford, but I spent most of my early life in another house in a different part of that county before moving to a third place. I subsequently moved to seven or eight addresses in Dublin before I moved to three addresses in County Wicklow. I mention that to illustrate the fact that most people change addresses several times during their lives. How could the automatic registration process be secured in that context? Who would tell who what and when? If a person who was born in Senator Bannon's home county is living in Dublin by the time he or she reaches the age of 18, how would the system work at that time to ensure that the person is automatically registered to vote? It would be difficult to put in place a system that would track automatically every citizen from the moment of his or her birth to the moment he or she turns 18.

While this proposition is theoretically attractive, there are real and practical reasons for opposing it. Which registration authority would receive the information leading to automatic registration? How would the process be triggered? This country does not have a system of personal identification that tracks people automatically from the cradle to the grave. There is an argument for providing for a national identity paper, or a national identity number. Even if we had such a number, we would still have huge practical difficulties in tracking people through different stages of their lives. Automatic registration would probably work if a large proportion of the population was static, but that is not the case.

I have never subscribed to the argument that local authorities, which have legal responsibility for preparing the register of electors, have been lazy or lethargic in fulfilling that duty. That suggestion is not fair. When the local authorities argued they did not have enough resources, I doubled their resources for 2006. When they said there was not enough publicity about registering to vote, I allocated €1 million of taxpayers' money for such publicity this year. If we establish a system of automatic registration, we will have to underpin it with an elaborate system to track the movement of every voter.