Local authorities will mount an aggressive €12 million campaign over the next six months to weed out inaccuracies in the electoral register.
During the campaign voters will be given up to four opportunities through door-to-door inquiries and follow-up letters to ensure their names remain on the register.
Names that cannot be confirmed at an address will then be removed from the register.
The proposed campaign was outlined yesterday by Minister for the Environment Dick Roche and has already been criticised by Opposition politicians who warned that it could lead to legitimate voters being unfairly removed from the register.
The plan, which will also involve a large publicity campaign, is aimed at removing up to 800,000 duplicate and inaccurate names on the current register. Meanwhile, Mr Roche has also mooted the possible use of biometric fingerprint scanners or simply having people dip their thumbs in indelible ink to prevent against electoral fraud. "Between the two extremes I think there are ways of addressing electoral fraud," he said.
In an appearance before the Oireachtas Committee on the Environment, Mr Roche said that the register update proposals would be finalised by county and city managers at a meeting today.
He said that local authorities were already spending in the region of €6 million a year on maintaining the electoral register, and that they would receive additional funding of between €5 million and €6 million for the programme to hire temporary staff such as census enumerators to carry out the work.
"The programme envisages that each household will be visited and provided with forms and information at least twice, if necessary," Mr Roche said. "In the event that this process does not satisfactorily register the household, written notification would then be given cautioning of the danger of being omitted from the register." This would be followed up by a final warning letter before a name is removed.
Describing the programme as "aggressive", Mr Roche said it reflected the widespread acceptance of a need for a more rigorous approach to the register.
However, the proposals were criticised by Labour's environment spokesman Éamon Gilmore, who said they could "actually make matters worse" by "unwittingly deleting people who have a perfectly legal right to vote".
He criticised Mr Roche for failing to adopt proposals made by Labour earlier this month to introduce simple legislation to allow information from the recent census to be used to correct the register.
Under his party's proposal, individuals would also be given a right to refuse to allow their personal information to be used in this way. "This is so simple it beggars belief," he said.
Mr Roche again rejected the proposal, claiming that the Central Statistics Office, which oversaw the census, had stressed its objection to any such move by the Government.
Green Party deputy Ciarán Cuffe accused Mr Roche of "using a blunderbuss" and ignoring other proposals.