Pádraic McCormack (Galway West, Fine Gael)

This concerns its essence. If there is a statutory commission to deal with this and remove it from the Minister's hands, there might be an opportunity to generate a consensus which would permit the introduction of electronic voting.

Nobody has a difficulty with electronic voting per se. The €5 million spent by the public relations company showing people how to switch off electric lights and press buttons was irrelevant to the debate. Everybody knows how to do that. The relevant issue in the debate was the trust people had in the method of voting at elections and the trust, or mainly lack of it, people had in the Government parties which were pushing this through despite the reservations of the Opposition and, more importantly, people outside politics who were experts in information technology. They had far more knowledge than us and were, and still are, extremely sceptical about this.

Eventually, the media, the Joe Duffy programme and everybody else forced the Government to set up the commission which has now rejected what the Minister tried to bulldoze through. Originally, he did not even concede that legislation was necessary. He eventually conceded that it was. Bit by bit, he is being forced to climb down on this issue. He should be more careful and a little more conciliatory about the valid points being made about the mess he is in. There is an old saying that when one is in a hole, one should stop digging. If the Minister would stop digging, it might be more helpful to the cause he is promoting.

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