The only term to describe Dick Roche's decision is a U-turn, writes Liam Reid Political Reporter
Minister for the Environment Dick Roche last week said it would not be "necessary. . . or prudent" to extend the deadline for changes to the electoral register.
"Prudent" was a word Mr Roche was using again yesterday, but this time to announce a complete reversal of his previous position.
The November 25th deadline would be extended by two weeks to December 9th, Mr Roche announced, and councils would have an additional two weeks until December 29th to finalise their work on the register.
The U-turn on the deadline is the latest twist in the ongoing controversy over the electoral register, which has raised yet new concerns about the whole process of improving the accuracy of the register.
The problem of the inaccurate register and the fundamental threat it poses to democracy through potential electoral fraud is acknowledged by virtually all politicians.
Since the Sunday Tribune first reported in June 2005 that up to 800,000 names were on the register that simply shouldn't be, both the Government and Opposition parties acknowledged the seriousness of the problem. However, the debate on the solution has been marked by bickering and a complete absence of cross-party consensus.
Eminently reasonable suggestions by the Opposition for the use of census enumerators and PPS numbers were trashed by the Government as unworkable.
The Government's own €12 million door-to-door campaign announced last May was then criticised by the Opposition as being too little, too late, with the potential of knocking off thousands of legitimate voters.
The proposal to extend the November 25th deadline was first made by Labour environment spokesman Eamon Gilmore two weeks ago, and backed unanimously by the all-party Oireachtas Committee on the Environment.
It came as anecdotal evidence of the removal of legitimate voters from the register as part of the €12 million update began to pour into Leinster House.
The argument was simple. More than 500,000 names had been removed and three weeks was simply not enough time for legitimate voters removed from the register to get a correction made. On Monday of last week, at his own request, Mr Roche met the committee to tell them why such an extension was not needed.
"The problem with making wholesale additions to the register beyond November 25th is that the whole practice would be pushed back beyond the Christmas period," he said during sometimes acrimonious exchanges with Opposition TDs. "The deadline for publishing the register is February 15th. It could not be the case that there would be no register of electors because, as one knows, the 2006 register expires on February 14th. It is in this regard that a practical issue arises."
He did say he could grant individual extensions to local authorities once a request had been made to him under a specific clause in the Electoral Act.
In explaining his U-turn yesterday, Mr Roche was at pains to portray the extension as not being in response to political pressure. In the previous 24 hours he had received extension requests from three local authorities, and he wanted to grant them.
He then received legal advice that the clause giving him the power to grant individual extensions may be unconstitutional. U-turn or not, the fact is that Mr Roche is now doing precisely what was suggested to him by Opposition politicians last week.