Tough new rules will be introduced shortly to vet the identities of people who apply to be added late to the voters' register before the general election, the Minister for the Environment has said.
The closing date for the general voters register closed on February 15th. However, people can get on to the supplementary list up to 10 days before polling if they have been resident at an address since the September before.
"The supplementary register is an area that needs to be tightened up. In future, people will have to be able to actually prove that they live where they say they live, and work where they say they work," Mr Dempsey said.
The move follows increased concern amongst the major parties that some Sinn Féin voters would try to vote more than once, an allegation which has provoked fury within the party.
New safeguards will be included in electoral legislation, which has to come before the Oireachtas within weeks to deal with the Supreme Court's ruling that candidates cannot be charged a fee to run. A greater number of identity checks will take place at polling stations, but Mr Dempsey does not intend to lay a minimum number, contrary to indications last weekend.
"There are few if any checks done now. They need to do an awful lot more. We have a very loose electoral system here and there has to be a balance struck," he told the Association of European Journalists.
Though he refused directly to accuse Sinn Féin, he said the planned changes "are based on experiences that people have had in Northern Ireland. I don't want the same things happening here and there was some evidence in Dublin during the last local elections where people were persuaded not to vote, even though their ballot ended up being used."
Sinn Féin TD Mr Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin backed identity checks and accused the major parties of conducting a smear campaign against his party. "Such spurious allegations have been used to explain away every Sinn Féin electoral advance from the Assembly elections in the six counties in 1982 to the local elections in this State in 1999," he said.
Meanwhile, Mr Dempsey said an information campaign would begin shortly to inform voters in Dublin North, Dublin West and Meath about the electronic voting machines they will be using on polling day.
The trial would be totally secure, he promised. He said it would deprive political parties of key information because they would no longer be able to get a breakdown of each ballot box. In addition, electronic voting, which will produce results before midnight on polling day, will offer a more accurate count, since all preferences will be taken into account, not just a random sample.
Meanwhile, he said Fianna Fáil's general election manifesto would include a commitment to end the dual mandate, where TDs hold seats on local authorities. Mr Dempsey suffered a major blow last year when he failed to get this change included in the Local Government Act, following the refusal of the pro-government Independent TDs to accept it.
"I regret very much that I was not able to outlaw the dual mandate, but I have not given up on this. I actually believe that it is inevitable that it will go within a relatively short period of time."
Combined with the PR voting system, the dual mandate encouraged TDs to spend too much time dealing with constituents' representations rather than national issues. "The majority of Oireachtas members do not believe that they should be doing a job for nothing that other people are doing for €11,000 a year," he said.
