This article is from page 2 of the 2006-11-28 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 2 JPG
THERE are almost 3,000 more people registered to vote in Clare than living in the county.
Amid claims that there are still deceased people on the register, especially in the Shannon area, more have complained that no-one called to their home to check who was eligible to vote.
This week, people who have voted in previous elections and still live at the same address have discovered that their names have been removed from the register without any notice.
As many as 12,335 amendments have been made to the Clare register since the Minister for Environment, Dick Roche, directed Local Authorities to undertake work to improve the accuracy of the Register of Electors.
Clare had one of the highest rates for deletion of names in the country, with 20 per cent of names removed.
Clare County Council engaged 66 field workers to undertake house-tohouse enquiries with a view to ensuring that eligible voters were correctly recorded in the Register of Electors.
In a written response to a council motion, Senior Executive Officer Michael McNamara said, “The current Register in force for 2006/2007 contains 86,331 names while the Draft Register published on November 2 following the fieldworkers exercise contains 83,748 and this will no doubt change having regard to the responses being receive since the publication of the Draft Register and the issuing of letter to persons where clarification was needed.
“Arising from the work of the fieldworkers, there were 12,335 amendments to the current register in force, these included persons who had changed address within the county in addition to persons who had moved away from the county or were deceased since the previous register was published.”
The full cost of the highly criticised register review has not been finalised, but so far a total of €90,512 has been spent in Clare.
The Department of the Environment have notified the council of an initial allocation of €79,000 for this work and say further allocations are available.
“If and when an election/referendum is called, persons have a further opportunity to get on the register through the supplementary list which has to be compiled within 14 working days of the polling date.”
The Draft Register is on display at all council offices, post offices, Garda stations and libraries or online www.checktheregister.ie.