HOUSING AND LOCAL Government Minister Eoghan Murphy has urged members of the public to ensure they are registered to vote by the 22 January. 

Those who are registered will appear on the Register of Electors which will apply for the upcoming General Election, along with the supplementary register. 

Anyone over 18 and resident in Ireland is urged to check online here to ensure their details are on the 2019-2020 register. The public can also check with their local authority. 

If your details are not on the electoral register, you are advised to contact your local authority and check that your details are on the supplement to the register of electors. 

In the case that a voter’s details are not included on this, applications can be made to the local authority with the complete and relevant forms. 

Those forms must be brought, along with photo ID to the local garda station for signature in the prescence of a member of An Garda Síochana. 

The deadline for forms to reach the local authority is the close of business on 22 January. 

“It is up to each of us as individuals to ensure we are correctly registered to vote and the best way to do that is to check directly with the relevant local authority” said Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Eoghan Murphy, said.

“However, the crucial point today is that there is still time to register to vote in this General Election.”

Earlier today, it emerged that thousands who registered to vote for the general election could be missing from the electoral register.

The issue centres around those voters who registered in the last year, and were put on a draft register which was to be added to the official register on 15 February. 

As the election date is before that, doubt has been cast over whether the government could legally have those on the draft register added to a supplementary register before polling day. 

The minister has yet to clarify whether those individuals would need to register for the supplementary register again. 

Opposition leader Micheál Martin said: “There was an onus on the Government to clear all that up before they named a date and I’m surprised that they let that situation develop.

“I think thousands of people should be facilitated, who are on the draft register, of being able to vote. We may even have the anomaly of people who voted in the local election but won’t be able to vote in the general election, which is very odd indeed.”