Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

It is a time for reflection and a time to pause. The science of report writing is a sober one. One must put down one's recommendations on paper quite cautiously and carefully. Section 4.4 of the report, which lists recommendations for action, states quite carefully that we should be quite cautious in proceeding with electronic voting. However, the most damning part of the report is the page on other issues which precedes this section. An entire page of the report is devoted to these. The language in the report is screaming at us to stop, go back and reconsider. This is the lesson that must be learned from it. My party believes an independent electoral commission is necessary if we are to have confidence restored in the electronic voting system. It is incumbent on the Minister to provide vision rather than continue on the route he has taken until now.

There are small parts of this legislation that need to be in place for the election in five weeks' time. I am happy about this, but the Minister should pull back and set up an all-party committee or procedure to allow for the kind of input evident in the submissions received and to feed into a review of the voting system. A total of 162 submissions were made by some of the best and brightest brains in Ireland who approached the issue from technical and political points of view among others. The majority of these individuals advised that we should proceed cautiously and carefully and many stated we should have an independent electoral commission. Rather than simply criticise the Minister, and there has been enough criticism of him, we should move on. We need to see some commitment on the part of the Minister to set up an independent electoral commission. This would start to restore confidence lost due to the fiasco of recent years.

I hope the Minister will take on board Deputy Gilmore's amendment which refers to the highest standards of transparency and accountability. We can only achieve these by pulling back and re-examining the entire process. I thank the commission for its work. It produced a carefully worded document. Each of the paragraphs on page 23 is a tremendous addition to what we know about electronic voting and each needs to be taken on board by the Minister's Department. I hope we will start from scratch again and I encourage the Minister to do so.

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