The Labour Party will ask the Dáil to approve a change in the law so that information collected in the current census can be used to update the electoral register.
Labour will table a Private Members Bill to allow local authorities to require the Central Statistics Office to provide certain basic information on persons usually resident within their area, including name, usual address, age and nationality.
This comes amid cross-party recognition that the register contains substantial inaccuracies.
Labour's environment spokesman, Eamon Gilmore, said yesterday that this was the only way to deal with "the immediate problem of the chaotic state of the electoral register".
The Government recently voted down a Labour Private Members Bill proposing the appointment of an electoral registration commissioner to supervise the compilation of the electoral register. As a result, Mr Gilmore said a short-term solution such as the use of census data was now needed.
"The refusal of the Government to treat this problem with the seriousness it deserves is difficult to understand. The scale of the irregularities in the register is such that it threatens the integrity of our democratic system and the reliability of our electoral process. Despite this, the Government and the Minister for the Environment, in particular, have rejected virtually every constructive suggestion made by the Opposition parties as to how to deal with the crisis, while Minister Roche has failed to come up with any convincing proposals of his own."
He said his party had already proposed that basic, non-confidential information now coming into the possession of the CSO should be used for the register. "We were told by both the Taoiseach and Minister Roche that the law did not allow for this.
"However, it would require just a very simple change to the law to make this information available to local authorities." Labour's Bill would would expire 12 months after the Dáil passed it.