Council staff check radio death notices and RIP.ie to help identify correct people to strike off electoral register

Some local authority staff check RIP.ie and listen to radio death notices as part of efforts to ensure the correct people’s names are removed from electoral registers after their deaths, An Coimisiún Toghcháin, the Electoral Commission, has reported.

The detail emerged at the launch of the Commission’s first oversight report on the Electoral Register, which found that there are likely to be hundreds of thousands of names on Ireland’s electoral registers that should not be there.

The watchdog that oversees elections is “deeply concerned” about “legacy accuracy issues”, it said. The commission has found that there are “an undefined, but potentially significant, number of duplicate or redundant entries” on the 31 electoral registers that are managed and maintained by the local authorities.

While councils are provided with information on deaths by the General Register Office (GRO), difficulties can arise, leading to the practice of consulting other sources.

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The commission’s head of electoral operations Tim Carey said death notices are not used as evidence to cross people off the register but can offer indications that the official has identified the correct person as they make their enquiries.

He said: “It is a time-consuming process to remove someone from the register.

“They get a lot of criticism for not removing people from the register but they need to be sure that they’re removing the right person.”

Duplicate entries can arise when people move from one local authority area to another while people’s names are also not always removed after they die.

The commission has recommended a plan for the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and local authorities “to finally address this issue before the next round of electoral events in 2029” .

It recommends that this should begin with audits of every Electoral Register in the country.

The commission could not offer data for the number of names on the registers that should not be there.

Its chief executive Art O’Leary said he has seen estimates of between 200,000 and 500,000 but: “It is not possible to say right now from the data that we have.”

He added: “We’ll have a better idea after we have the audit. It is safe to say this figure is in the hundreds of thousands.”

However, asked by reporters if there was anything to suggest elections have been compromised as a result, Mr Carey said there was “no evidence to suggest that.”

The commission’s report identified 11 local authorities where the register had more people on them than the entire population of those areas eligible to be on the register.

These were Sligo, Donegal, Leitrim, Longford, Monaghan, Galway County, Cork County, Westmeath, Carlow, Cavan and Mayo.

The Commission also looked at the use of “accuracy indicators” on the registers including the level of PPS numbers, listed dates of birth and Eircodes associated with names.

All 11 local authorities with excessive number of names on their registers were found to have below average accuracy indicators.

The Commission has not recommended that it be a requirement for voters to provide a PPS number to stay on the register.

It is encouraging people to provide them voluntarily as part of efforts to improve the accuracy of the registers.

The report‘s key recommendations set out the need for accuracy audits of each register and a national awareness campaign focused on accurate voter registration.

It has called for the setting of standards for accuracy and an increase of resources for local authority electoral registers.

There is ongoing work being carried out on bringing in a new national electoral registration system next year.

Minister for Housing and Local Government James Browne announced earlier this week that €3 million will be available to local authorities this year for the modernisation project.

Each council will be able to use part of the funding to put in place two additional staff to address identified data issues in preparation for the move to the new electoral registration system.