Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

We are moving this motion collectively because of the urgency and gravity of the matter in hand. This is not a matter of mere technology. We are debating the quintessence of democracy — how we, as democrats, elect those who govern us. We are addressing the power, significance and value of the individual vote. We are examining a development that can affect the security and accuracy of the electoral process and possibly even the validity of elections and the legitimacy of the Government in this country. That is why we need an electoral commission to oversee the implementation of electronic voting in a fair and transparent manner which has the trust of the political parties and the public alike.

It would be fatally damaging to democracy if we introduced a system of voting whose configuration meant that the public could have neither ownership nor faith. At a time when a third of the citizens of this Republic claim to have no interest in politics, we should attempt to cultivate public confidence and participation in the political process instead of kill it. However, with its gung-ho attitude, the Government intends to carry on regardless. Owing to what we hope is merely political vanity, it is intent on railroading through a system of electronic voting about which many expert warnings have been and continue to be issued and about which serious political and public concerns have been raised.

There is the further matter of whether the introduction is constitutional. On 5 February 2004, the Tánaiste confirmed to this House that to implement electronic voting, legislative change would be required, and that the change would be by way of secondary legislation under section 48 of the Electoral (Amendment) Act 2001. The advice which Fine Gael has had for many weeks is that the making of an order which amends primary legislation in a way as substantive as that suggested by the Tánaiste is unconstitutional. By making an order under section 48, the Minister would effectively assume the role of the Legislature, something that would be contrary to Article 15.2.1° of the Constitution, which states:

The sole and exclusive power of making laws for the State is hereby vested in the Oireachtas: no other legislative authority has power to make laws for the State.

Today the Government has announced that it is to introduce primary legislation to facilitate the application of electronic voting to all Dáil elections. That last-minute acknowledgement that new legislation is necessary simply highlights the incompetent way in which the entire process has been handled. However, this is about more than law. It concerns public trust, a precious commodity on which elections and Governments must be based. We have a coalition Government that treats the national Parliament as something between a tedious annoyance and a private political playground. We have an Administration that bought its re-election with the people's money and has commandeered the public finances as a private political electioneering fund. Today in the House we heard the Minister for Finance, Deputy McCreevy, say with equanimity that the timing of his decentralisation plans was driven solely by the political needs of his party.

Then there is the matter for the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Cullen. He is the person overseeing the introduction of electronic voting. He was forced to withdraw a public information document devised by a public relations company appointed by him and run by a former Fianna Fáil general secretary such was the poor and skewed quality of the information that it contained. The Minister, Deputy Cullen, just happens to be the Fianna Fáil director of elections. When it comes to elections, the same Government tells us that there is no problem, that it knows what it is doing, and that it is the Government and should be trusted. There are several political reasons trust and the Government are mutually exclusive.

When one examines the practicality of the system that it proposes to foist on the country, there are other reasons that we cannot have trust, not least that the electoral process in this country could become the property of a privileged technological elite. First, there is the matter of suppression. The Government deliberately suppressed the 2002 report by the experts, Zerflow Holdings, which showed that the machines to be used in e-voting are not tamper-proof.

That brings us to the second reason not to have trust — vulnerability. Apart from rigging and sabotage, there are such politically benign yet critical difficulties as computer failure. Computer systems fail regularly. However, under the proposed system, in the event of failure, there will be no paper trail and no secondary system to verify the voting and counting process. Numerous experts, all of them technocrats and all of them professional, have warned that more tests need to be carried out before implementing the widespread use of electronic voting. In 2002, even the Comptroller and Auditor General warned the Government in the strongest terms on what it was about to do. He issued his independent validation warning on the grounds that: "the integrity and security of the voting system is fundamental to the exercise of democracy".

The third reason is the matter of public ownership of the electoral system — actual and perceived. At present, the public has ownership of that process. When a person casts his or her vote or puts it in the ballot box, that person knows that he or she has voted and for whom and can leave the polling station secure in that knowledge. It is both accountable and verifiable at every stage. Now, however, the Government wants the public to have electoral faith in a system of voting which cannot be properly scrutinised because of commercial sensitivity. It is wrong that the electorate or those running for election should have to accept, on no basis other than good faith and blind trust, the technological code that enabled the electoral process to take place. That technological code is held as a proprietary secret by a private Dutch company rather than in the public domain. The wider community of computer experts must be able to examine the source code. An open source code held for the public in the public domain is required rather than an entity with commercial sensitivity attached. The people of this country are entitled to believe that their democracy is worth more than the competitive advantage or future profits of any private company.

We will have no paper trail. If one books one's holiday on-line and anything goes wrong, one will have a paper trail. If one takes cash from an ATM, one gets a receipt showing the transaction and how little one has left in one's account. If one pays for one's groceries in the supermarket, one gets a chit of paper indicating the transaction. However, if one casts one's vote into the black hole that is the Government's version of electronic voting, one simply hopes for the best. Under the Government's proposals, when one has pressed the button, whatever colour it is, one leaves the polling station without knowing what one has done. The machine does not tell one what one has done. One walks out of that polling station insecure in the knowledge that one's vote has been registered in the way that one cast it. If we do not have a system in this country in which the voting electorate can have trust and faith, we are not doing our business, and the Government is wrong on this.

The Labour Party, the Fine Gael Party and the Green Party, to mention but three, have, for what it is worth, majority support in public opinion polls, and the Government, in the words of Bobby Molloy when he spoke in the Seanad as Minister of State, should not attempt to introduce something such as this unless it has all-party and cross-party support. The Government's belated anxiety, conversion and ability to listen a little to people's concerns leave much to be desired.

If we do not have a verifiable paper system and a paper trail with which people can be happy, how can people have faith and trust in the election system? Every Deputy in the Chamber, with the exception of a few, has probably stood outside polling stations, large and small, in wet weather and in fine. When electors passed us on their way in and smiled benignly or otherwise, at least they cast their vote. When they passed us on their way out, they knew what they had done while we did not.

In the case of electronic voting one cannot spoil one's vote. If a person informs a presiding officer that he or she wants to vote and decides, on seeing the ballot on the machine, that he or she does not like any of the candidates, he or she will not be able to register that choice. In addition, when the presiding officer switches off the machine, he or she will know that the person in question has not voted, which infringes the secrecy of the ballot box. It is a person's right to have an opportunity to vote against all candidates or to vote for one or another of them. If there is no such scrutiny, how can we possibly maintain the legitimacy of elections, never mind justify the legitimacy of government and public confidence in it?

This system is at its most vulnerable at the point at which the programme reading units — PRUs — come into use. This occurs when the returning officer feeds all the disks into the central machine which then reads them for local and European elections. The system is technologically highly vulnerable at this point. Changes would not need to be made in every constituency as just a few alterations would result in matters going radically wrong.

The Government is proposing a fig leaf of an independent panel, while at the same time expressing its intention to press ahead with the full implementation of electronic voting in the local and European elections. If the Government was serious about the views of independent experts and the concerns of ordinary people and those who intend to vote, it would have produced a Green Paper and a White Paper and would now suspend its plans for electronic voting in June. Its belated amendment is an admission that it has failed to convince the political parties and the public that its chosen system of electronic voting can be relied on. Instead of facing up to its failure, it is trying to fudge its way out of the mess in which it has landed itself.

Last December, Margaret McGaley, a respected academic and authority on electronic voting told the Joint Committee on the Environment and Local Government:

The introduction of electronic voting in Ireland, in its current form, threatens the integrity of our democracy. As demonstrated in the report before us, this is an issue that has been incompetently addressed by the Government. The cost of the development of a suitable system, and whether the potential advantages would justify that cost, remain undiscussed.

The Government will argue that the electronic voting machine will produce a paper trail, which is the case, but only on foot of a High Court petition. One can work this backwards. It is pointless having the machine produce 1,000 paper trails on foot of High Court petitions if the system has been tampered with or is not tamper proof in the first instance because it will produce the wrong kind of paper trail in all cases. At least with the current system, one can store the ballot boxes in a hayshed, whereas with the new system they must be stored in electronically controlled, humidified conditions. As well as the cost involved, the machines must be checked for security, public liability and much else on an ongoing basis.

The Taoiseach stated yesterday that he knows about software, this country knows about it as it is one of its leading producers and it is important that things are checked. It is a long time since the by-election when the late, lamented Willie O'Brien arrived at a school in north Mayo to find the presiding officer with his Wellingtons covered in whitewash, having painted the slogan "Vote Fianna Fáil" on the roof of the polling station. It is important that things are checked and are trusted.

If the Government tampers with the voting system without acquiring the trust of the political parties and the people, it will not be allowed to forget it. It would be political sacrilege to proceed and I urge the Ministers of State to carry the message to their senior Ministers that the proposals be deferred, expenditure on them cease, and an independent commission and a verifiable audit trail established. The technological questions which were asked should also be answered and we should have a full-scale discussion of the issue.

The Government must stop this nonsense and address the issue of sustaining the integrity of and the credibility in a system which has stood the country well, through thick and thin, tension and controversy and public debate. At least the current process was verifiable throughout, for good or ill; the Government's plan is not.

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