The State's electoral register is in a shambles and fundamental changes are needed - such as the use of Personal Public Service Numbers - to prevent fraud, writes Steven Smyrl
The Government admits there is a serious problem with the country's electoral register. In the Dáil, in March, former Labour leader Ruairí Quinn described the register as an "absolute farce". I would go further and say that it is in chaos and has been for very many years.
Tánaiste Mary Harney gives the game away by saying that when she first came into politics it was the task of party members to ensure that the register was kept up to date. This attitude typifies why the register is in such a shambles. What the Tánaiste really meant was that each party wanted to ensure that anyone likely to vote for them was not omitted.
It has never been the responsibility of any other body than the State to ensure that an annual register is compiled. Therefore, it is the State's responsibility to see that it is maintained to a high standard.
The bedrock of a parliamentary democracy is its voters registration system - a clear record of who can vote and in which elections. The key to such a system is in establishing each elector's identity and this is the nub of the problem.
In Ireland's case the problem is compounded by the relatively small number of surnames in use.
For instance, think of how many people in Ireland are called Murphy, O'Byrne, or Byrne, or O'Sullivan, or Sullivan, and in some areas every other person has the same surname. Harrington on the Bere peninsula, Co Cork, is a case in point.
Electoral registers were first compiled in the later 19th century, replacing their forebears - the Freeholders Lists or Freemen Rolls. Up to that time the right to vote was established in incorporated towns by being a freeman of the borough and in county areas through land holding.
In the late 1820s, Ireland's electorate was severely reduced when the franchise qualification for leasehold property was raised from 40 shillings to £10.
This effectively disenfranchised Ireland's "strong" farmers, Catholic and Protestant alike. At a stroke the electorate outside of incorporated towns fell from 216,000 to only 37,000.
Various amending Acts were passed later in the 19th century re-enfranchising various groups, but none had such enormous effect as the 1918 Representation of the People Act. This was Westminster's biggest impact on Ireland (and therefore the UK's) electoral system, giving the vote to all men aged 21 or over and women aged 29 or over.
It is from this period that the electoral register as we know it dates. Not only is it a vital electoral tool, but also an annual account of the adult population, a near census used by such people as historians, social geographers and genealogists.
At the various periods of its publication it has detailed citizenship status; who can vote and in which elections; who held a local authority vote on foot of business premises; eligibility for jury service; household sizes; and membership of the armed forces or police services. Interestingly, though it remains a public document, within the last few years severe new legislation has been implemented in relation to the use of the electoral register for purposes other than elections.
Such EU-instigated legislation has been implemented throughout these islands. The change in law was a measure to curb the amount of unsolicited junk mail issuing from direct marketing agencies.
However, this issue has been more effectively addressed by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government's new Mailing Preference Register. In the meantime, for instance, firms involved in tracing beneficiaries for solicitors are now finding that completing this vital work is becoming unnecessarily complicated and protracted.
Interestingly, in all that time the form of the collection of the data to produce the register has hardly changed. All information collected is taken on blind trust and this is why there are so many mistaken and fraudulent entries on the register.
Currently, each local authority collects the data to update its area's register. Until recently, this was done in a variety of ways, each unwittingly compromising the register's integrity. Some authorities sent officials to call at all homes and ask for each adult's particulars. Basically, this took the form of a collection of names.
However, as the custom in rural areas was (and still is) to list the electorate alphabetically within townlands, this simple approach often led to confusion. Again, the problem was compounded by Ireland's paucity of surnames and, until relatively recent times, Catholic Ireland's use of only a handful of first names.
During the 1950s to the 1980s, the years of mass emigration, some local authorities virtually abandoned collecting data and relied upon either local people notifying the registration authority of changes or upon "voluntary" work by local politicians.
The result of this overseen chaos was that new voters failed to be added to the register, while those who had emigrated or died were not removed. In such a situation, introducing fraudulent entries into the register was (and still is) all too easy.
In recent years each local authority now delivers an Application for Registration form to each household to be completed and returned by post.
Each elector is asked for their surname, forename(s), date of birth, and citizenship status. Unfortunately, many of the forms are not returned and virtually no follow-up process exists. And even allowing for these serious shortfalls, far worse is that all data is still accepted without question.
In order to resolve the issue of Ireland's chaotic electoral register, far more needs to be done than just utilising the Central Statistics Office's census enumerators.
Minister for the Environment Dick Roche is expected to make an announcement later this week about the Government's plans to improve the country's ailing locally-based electoral registration system. Tinkering at the edges of the problem will do nothing, as the system needs fundamental change. Similar to Northern Ireland, the Republic should establish a chief electoral office for the whole country. This may or may not exclude future input into the creation of the register by local authorities.
A new register should be compiled from scratch and each elector asked to provide, in addition to the usual information, his or her Personal Public Service Number (PPSN). The use of the PPSN would immediately act as a fail-safe against erroneous and fraudulent entries in the register.
Having created a new register, in future years only new applications for inclusion would require to be authenticated.
The notion behind the creation of the PPSN is to provide each citizen with direct access to government services and in this context it is ideal in resolving the chaos now engulfing the Irish electoral register.
• Steven ffeary-Smyrl is a genealogist specialising in legal genealogy and former honorary secretary of the Association of Professional Genealogists in Ireland