Minister for the Environment Dick Roche is to support an appeal to the Data Protection Commissioner to reverse a ruling that local authorities should not publish lists of people deleted from the electoral register.
The commissioner's office gave the advice to South Dublin County Council after it received a request from Dublin South West TD and Labour leader Pat Rabbitte.
Political parties argue that the lists are vital if they are to get people removed from the register put back on before the expiry of the revised deadline in late December.
In the Dáil, Mr Rabbitte said: "I wrote to my county manager asking him for the list of deletions from the register of electors. Such lists have been furnished widely to colleagues in the House.
"I got a letter back eventually stating the council has been advised by the data protection office that the data is personal and should not be disclosed to third parties," he said.
It is understood that the commissioner's office advised the local authority that it could be in conflict with the legislation if it produced a list of names deleted from the electoral register.
However, it would not be in breach of the same legislation if it continued to offer electronic copies of the present register and its predecessor, thus allowing the political parties to work out the deletions for themselves.
Last night, Mr Roche said this appeared to him to "be a nonsense" since it was clear that Mr Rabbitte's efforts to ensure the register is up to date tallied with the local authority's own efforts.
"I told him that he should appeal this to the commissioner, and if he does, I will support him," said Mr Roche, who has granted extra time to councils to sort out the problems.
Dublin South West Sinn Féin TD Seán Crowe said the names of 6,500 people from estates in Jobstown, Killinarden, Cushlawn in West Tallaght have disappeared in the draft register - some of his strongest voting areas.
Last night, Mr Crowe claimed that a large number of the houses in the estates had not been visited by council-hired register checkers: "The whole point of this was to improve the register, not remove people from it."
Labour Kildare County Council councillor John McGinley said 6,000 names had been removed from the register in Celbridge in North Kildare.
Mr Roche said local authorities had been told not to delete the names of their own tenants from electoral registers, even if these people did not bother to fill in the forms dropped to each house on two occasions by election staff.
"The guidelines made it very clear that people were to use their common sense. They were told that they must be cognisant of the fact that they have other information on record that shows that people do live at a particular house," he said.
