Warnings of a "threat to democracy" are thrown around by politicians like confetti at a wedding and are rarely justified. But in the case of the state's current register of electors, it is legitimate to talk in such terms. Despite this, the government seems unable or unwilling to take the necessary remedial action.

It's not as if they are unaware of the threat. Nine months ago, research by political analyst Odran Flynn was published in this newspaper which established beyond doubt what everyone in politics had already suspected about the register.

Anecdotal evidence had long existed of people who were dead for 10 years but still on the register and people being on the register in a number of different constituencies at the same time.

But the real shock in the research was just how overstated the register was.

Flynn established that it could be wrong by up to 800,000 voters, a staggering 36% of the electorate.

Nobody in government or the Department of Environment disputed the story.

They couldn't. The research was beyond dispute . . . the only doubt was whether the register was out by 600,000 or 800,000 voters and even if it was the lower figure , the level of error was still at crisis proportions.

Following the Sunday Tribune revelations, both the Taoiseach and Minister for Environment Dick Roche publicly accepted the register was a mess. Addressing the Dail, Roche acknowledged that the issues raised were of concern. He said that the responsibility lay with the local authorities who compiled the register. He went on to say: "I do not think that local authorities are doing their job in this respect sufficiently well. In some cases the work is excellent, but in others it is appalling."

Roche undertook to produce guidelines last summer to ensure that local authorities properly addressed the problem. "I will make it clear to local authorities that if they do not clean up their act, I will look for someone else who will do it for them. . .

Arrangements must be put in place to ensure that the current scenario does not recur, " he said.

Well we now also know for certain that the current scenario has indeed 'recurred'. The new electoral register came into operation two weeks ago, on 15 February.

Although the register was published on 1 February, the Department of Environment was unable to provide the latest figure when contacted by this newspaper 10 days ago. However, by contacting each of the 34 local authorities, the Sunday Tribune established that the new register of electors has 3.129 million people.

To put that figure into context, that is 300,000 people more than the number of Irish and British adults in the state. Roche himself has focused on this figure when discussing the problem with the register.

However, the true scale of the problem is much, much bigger. The 300,000 figure assumes that every citizen in the state is on the register.

That is never, ever the case.

Internationally, the norm is that 80-85% of the population is on the register at any given time. Flynn estimates that the new register is in fact wrong by between 719,000 and 860,000. Let's even assume for a moment that, despite the obvious chaos in the register, Ireland is better than its peers and has 90% of its citizens on the register, the level of inaccuracy would still be close to 600,000.

And if a mere 1% of those polling cards are used fraudulently, that would mean 6,000 votes being cast illegally in the next general election. Bearing in mind that in the last election, the final seat in 16 constituencies was determined by less than 400 votes, those 6,000 votes would have the potential to dramatically alter the outcome of the next election.

It is worth noting also that at every general election since 1981, a few hundred votes would have elected a different government (in 1992, six votes would have been enough).

Yet despite this genuinely alarming scenario, the government appears to be sleepwalking its way to the next election without doing anything meaningful to address the situation.

The latest figures on the electoral register show that producing guidelines to ensure local authorities address the problem and writing to the authorities requesting them to "take all necessary steps to secure significant improvement in the register" have not worked. They couldn't possibly. Only a centralised system has the capacity to provide a solution.

It is patently obvious now that responsibility for compiling the electoral register must be taken from the individual local authorities.

We need to follow the lead of the north. It set up an independent Electoral Office for Northern Ireland, a statutory body with responsibility for running elections.

The register of electors was compiled from scratch by using teams of people to call on each house in the six counties. Voters' unique national insurance numbers . . . the equivalent of the PPS number in the south . . . were used to ensure that each person could only be on the register once. The process brought about an immediate reduction of 10% in the electoral register and, in tandem with a strict system where photo ID is required in order to cast a vote, virtually eliminated voter fraud.

A similar independent electoral commission is required here to manage a centralised register. It is also essential that PPS numbers are used to end the common occurrence of people, usually inadvertently, being on the register in more than one constituency.

A spokesman for Roche told the Sunday Tribune that the use of PPS numbers is being examined in conjunction with the Department of Social and Family Affairs and the Office of the Attorney General. While he said it was not the practice to comment in detail on legal advice, he added that it was clear that significant legal issues arise in relation to such use of PPS numbers.

But as Labour's Eamon Gilmore . . . the one politician who has consistently raised this issue and drawn up his own private members' bill to address it . . . points out, if there are data protection issues around the use of PPS numbers, they can be addressed by legislation.

The problem for the government is that time is not on its side. When the Sunday Tribune first revealed the scale of the crisis, there was two years to a general election, now there are, at most, 15 months. Furthermore, the census of population, a perfect opportunity to build a new register, is now little more than a month away . . . hardly sufficient time to adapt the questionnaire for this purpose.

But this must not be an excuse for inaction. Successive governments, dating back to 1966, have ignored the problem with the register. However, the scale of inaccuracy and the potential for abuse is now so large that immediate action is required. Responsibility lies with the Minister for Environment and the Taoiseach. They should not need reminding that holding a general election with an electoral register overstated by over 30% is dangerously irresponsible.