Plan to remove electoral names denied

Dún Laoghaire Rathdown Council has denied it intends to remove the names of up to 20,000 people that it has failed to make contact with from the draft electoral register for the Dún Laoghaire constituency.

The council sent over 19,000 letters on December 22nd to people warning them their names could be removed from the final electoral register unless they confirmed their status with the authority.

But a spokesman told ireland.comthe council did not intend to delete the names of anyone other than those it had confirmed were deceased, not resident at the specified address or duplicated on the register.

He said the council had gone to "considerable lengths" to contact people through the post and with personal calls but that there were still over 18,000 names on the register than it could not account for.

Labour Party TD Eamon Gilmore warned of potential electoral chaos if the names were removed from the draft electoral register.

Mr Gilmore said he had been contacted by a number of voters who had received letters in recent days from the council suggesting their names would be removed from the final electoral register unless they turned up in person at an electoral court that is due to be held at the Circuit Court tomorrow.

"These letters appear to have been sent to voters that the council failed to make contact with earlier in the year. However, these names were allowed to remain on the draft electoral register and when people checked the register - as they were advised to - they found that there name was included and assumed no further action was required on their part."

Mr Gilmore said he is concerned that this situation has been allowed to develop and there is no an urgent obligation on the council to move immediately to publicly clarify the situation. "Those who received these letters should be told either by another letter or through a public announcement that there is no need for them to turn up in court," he said.

"The council should also give an undertaking that people whose names appeared on the draft register will not be removed unless there is firm evidence that they are not entitled to vote," he added.