GERRY ADAMS has been told that he cannot be added to the electoral register in Louth as he was not ordinarily resident in the State on September 1st.
He will now apply to be included on the supplementary register once the next general election is called.
Mr Adams announced last month that he is to quit the Northern Assembly to seek the Sinn Féin nomination in the Louth constituency in the next general election following party colleague Arthur Morgan’s decision not to seek re-election.
However, as this decision was only taken in November, Mr Adams was found not to have been ordinarily resident in the State on September 1st as is required for inclusion on the electoral register.
Mr Adams was not present in the Louth County Council offices in Dundalk yesterday morning when the decision was taken by the revision court, which considers changes to the draft register.
However, he later met county registrar for Louth Maireád Ahern.
According to a spokesman for Mr Adams, he was informed there would be “no difficulty” with him being entered on the supplementary register once the next general election is called by Taoiseach Brian Cowen.
He said there was no question of Mr Adams not being resident in the State and emphasised that the issue related to his residency on that particular date.
“Under legislation they can’t put him on the register because you have to be resident in the State on September 1st. However, the decision wasn’t reached until mid-November.”
“It wasn’t an issue of his current residency in the State, it was the issue of his residency on September 1st,” he said, adding that Mr Adams would be filing the appropriate forms to be included on the supplementary register.
The spokesman said that Mr Adams had been resident in the State since mid-November although his family continues to reside in Northern Ireland.
Mr Adams’s decision to run in the Louth constituency preceded an announcement by Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern, of the same constituency, that he would not be seeking re-election.