Kildare residents not eligible to vote sent polling cards

VOTING CARDS:SOME RESIDENTS in Kildare who are not Irish citizens received polling cards to vote in yesterday's referendum, the Department of the Environment has confirmed.

It is not known if any of those in receipt of polling cards who are not entitled to vote actually voted.

The database sent by Kildare County Council to the mailing company contained the entire register of electors for the county.

The register of electors includes all those who are entitled to vote in any election, including local elections.

Residents who are not Irish citizens are entitled to vote in local elections but not in referendums.

In the past, each local authority dealt with its own polling cards. It would receive cards from the department with a blank space for the name, address and polling station of the voter and the details would be printed on the cards through a mail merging system.

The production of combined polling cards and information booklets was centralised for the first time this year.

All local authorities were instructed to supply electorate databases to one of two mailing companies who printed the details on the booklets and then passed them on for distribution.

A spokesman for Kildare County Council said it supplied the full database because it was instructed to do so by the Department of the Environment.

"We did what we were instructed to do; had we been producing the cards ourselves, we would have only used the presidential list of voters," he said.

A spokesman from the Department of the Environment conceded that the circular it sent to all local authorities about the new arrangements contained "some ambiguity".

However, he said the department was not aware of any other local authority who had supplied the entire register of electors to the mailing company.

He also pointed out that polling officers could check on their lists whether a person attending a polling station to vote was actually entitled to vote.

"The register will clearly identify those who are not entitled to vote," he said.

It may not be possible, however, to identify whether or not a person who was not entitled to vote actually voted.

Unlike in a general election, the sheets used by polling officers to note who or who has not voted are not kept beyond the day of voting, the spokesman added.

Meanwhile, the Irish Print and Packaging Forum has criticised remarks made by Olivia Mitchell TD in which she said the centralised printing of the polling cards was a disaster.

Director of the organisation Gerry Andrews said the companies involved had done an excellent job.

He said it had carried out the work on schedule and in some cases ahead of schedule.

"This contract was a small opportunity for the SMEs involved to win a public contract for the first time," he said.

"It is worth noting that not a single politician had a comment to make when last year's Lisbon Treaty printing contract was needlessly imported from Portugal," he said.