Extra 500,000 names on electoral register, says Roche

ENVIRONMENT Minister Dick Roche yesterday conceded that there up to 500,000 extra names on the electoral register and that the problem will not be fully resolved in time for next year’s General Election.

However, Mr Roche disagreed with the view of an expert in the area, Odran Flynn, that 700-800,000 false or duplicate names may be on the current register, which was updated last month. He did accept that upwards of 300,000 names are on the register that should not be there.

“There are problems on the voting register and the problems haven’t arisen overnight,” he told RTÉ Radio’s This Week.

“They are not going to be resolved overnight. We could dispute and debate the projections. Even if you go back to 2002, there were 300,000 names more on the voting register than should have been on it.

“It’s something we cannot continue to live with; incidents of error on the voting register.”

Mr Roche said the reason that so many extra names are included on the register was because they have not been properly edited.

He pointed to failures to remove the names of people who had died or who had moved from old addresses.

He also said that local authorities were slow to add residents of new housing estates to the register and then cross-reference them with older records.

However, asked why the Government had not taken decisive action, he said the solution was not a simple one. He said he had issued instructions to local authorities to put more resources into updating the register.

The other device that has been floated by Mr Roche has been to base the register on the PPS (social and security) number of every adult in the State. There are legal issues surrounding this area, and such a move may require primary legislation.

He accepted that the problem with the register may not be sorted out before next year’s election.

On the issue of the controversial e-voting machines, the Minister said that he was exploring the feasibility of a central storage facility. At present the machines are stored in constituencies.

He said that any decision on introducing e-voting would be dependent on the next report of the Commission on Electronic Voting which is expected shortly.