Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I find it remarkable that the Minister has shifted ground. The original purpose of this Bill was to introduce electronic voting on 11 June. That is the reason it was hurriedly brought to the House. Time was taken up on Second Stage which the House could more usefully have used to consider legislation to address tenants rights, the price of land and houses and the other urgent, inadequately dealt with issues which come under the remit of the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. The Government's hurry to introduce electronic voting was the reason the Bill was on Committee Stage last week. The ink was hardly dry on amendments made on Committee Stage before the Bill was brought back to the House on Report Stage. The Minister is now telling the House that the Bill is not really about electronic voting. He says it is about putting the commission on a statutory footing.

As far as the Minister was concerned, the commission was always incidental to the entire issue. It was an afterthought which was established under pressure from the Opposition. It was given limited terms of reference with which to carry out a difficult task in a limited timeframe. It must be acknowledged that the commission has done an outstanding job in those circumstances. The Minister relies on the fact that the commission said it was reasonably happy with the voting machine hardware. The criticisms we made of the system had little or nothing to do with the hardware. Our criticisms mainly involved the software and its possible vulnerability.

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