Minister for Finance Brian Cowen insists that it will be possible to get on the electoral register up to 15 days before the next general election. He was responding yesterday to a demand by Labour leader Pat Rabbitte that the Government take urgent action on the incorrect deletion of names from the register.
Mr Cowen said it was not a case that if a person failed to register by the November 25th deadline, he or she would be deprived of a vote.
"A supplementary register system is in place, which is designed to make sure we do not end up in the position that pertained in the old days, where, once the white register was published in January or February, that was it," he added.
Mr Rabbitte said the November 25th deadline should be extended, because it was not possible to deal with the scale of inaccuracy between now and then.
"A massive advertising and public awareness campaign is needed and the leaders of political parties need to make a joint appeal to the public in respect of the state of the register," he added.
"Additional resources should be provided to local authorities to validate the job that requires to be done. A helpline, with in-built verification, is needed for those who cannot go online to correct inaccuracies."
Mr Rabbitte suggested that anybody whose name had been deleted ought to be notified of it in writing and told what could be done about it. The procedure for getting on the supplementary register ought to be made more amenable.
Mr Cowen, who was taking the Order of Business in the absence of the Taoiseach, said the Government would take the matter seriously. "It is not a question of being blase about it. We are all aware of the serious problems there were with the accuracy of the register and that has been a feature of the register for a long number of years," he added.
"This has been exacerbated by population mobility with hundreds of thousands of people changing their addresses every year. For example, 90,000 new homes were built last year while thousands of other houses changed hands."
Mr Cowen said councils had been slow to remove people from the register. Failure to remove names on death, or failure to reflect family breakdown or ownership of second homes, had complicated what was never a simple issue in the first place.
The Government, Mr Cowen said, had instigated a comprehensive and thorough review. Local authorities had completed field work for the most extensive and equitable registration campaign in decades.
"A total of 1,500 field workers called on 1.25 million households while extensive publicity campaigns were undertaken. Suggestions in the media that the draft register would still contain more than 500,000 names, which should not be included, may have arisen because of the failure to take into account the 8 per cent increase in population when one compares the 2002 census result with the 2007-08 register," he added.
He added that between now and November 25th, they had to examine what way political parties and activists could help to make sure voters were registered.
Earlier, referring to the "electoral register mess", Mr Rabbitte urged Mr Cowen to take a personal interest in the situation which had been created. "Some 600,000 names were moved from the register, but the problem is that they are not the correct names." He added that an estimated 20 per cent of people on the register should not be on it, but instead, the wrong names had been deleted. He said Minister for the Environment Dick Roche had described these as "inadvertent deletions".
