Charlie McCreevy (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

Returning officers will apply rigid access security procedures at all stages of the election so that only authorised staff will have access to the stand-alone voting machines and the PCs used at the election. Some security concerns have been raised about the use of PCs. The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government has had the arrangements for the PCs checked with experts from two leading companies in the PC and software industry and they expressed satisfaction with arrangements. The new election-specific PCs to be supplied to returning officers will have been specially security hardened with only the software necessary for the election loaded on them. This means that it will not be possible to load other software on the PCs during the election period. Only staff authorised by the returning officer will have access to a PC and there will be specific security access procedures to log in to the PCs. The PCs will also be under the control and direction of the returning officers at all times. Neither the voting machines nor PCs will be linked to any network, internally or externally, so that hacking and virus attack will not be possible.

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