ELECTORAL REGISTER:TWO WOMEN unable to cast their votes in the Galway West constituency staged a protest at Galway City Hall.
Former RTÉ producer Mary Phelan had cancelled a trip to the US so she could vote, but discovered that her name had been taken off the electoral register when she arrived at her polling station in Renmore.
“I had voted from the same address before and nobody had contacted me to say my name was being removed.”
Galway City Council informed her at City Hall that an enumerator had called to her home and someone had advised the local authority that she was not living there. However, Ms Phelan said that, as she lived alone, she did not believe this was possible.
When Ms Phelan refused to leave City Hall, gardaí were called to try to resolve the issue.
Ms Phelan was joined outside the local authority headquarters by a young Galway mother, Lisa Hardiman, who had also been told at Mervue polling station that she was not on the register.
Ms Hardiman had moved home to live with her mother who is deaf, and she was told that an enumerator had spoken to her mother and that she had been removed from the register last November.
Ms Hardiman said she had been informed that she would have received notification of this, but she said she never received such information. She was “very angry” as she had wanted to vote.
Ms Phelan said she had not checked the electoral register beforehand as she had never had difficulty before with voting. She had really wanted to exercise her franchise as she had been affected badly by the economic downturn.
