Minister under pressure to sort electoral register

The Environment Minister is coming under pressure to sort out the 'shambolic' state of the country's electoral register.

Experts say there are up to 800,000 more names on the voters' list than there should be.

Many of them are dead but others are registered at more than one address and so could vote more than once.

Political analyst Odran Flynn said: "If you got a group of people together who were prepared to organize a situation, they can actually use those votes, particularly in constituencies where you would be very certain in advance there was going to be a very tight result in a General Election.

"Since 1981, every election has been decided by a few hundred votes and in 1992, six votes the other way would have changed the government."