Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

It will reassure the country. The British Government sensibly decided to carry out tests of electronic voting before committing itself to using electronic voting in elections. The last tests were in 2003 and more trials were scheduled for 2004, but these were abandoned on the advice of the electoral commission. They have now abandoned the whole idea. Whatever the Minister may think of the British electoral system, the British Government has approached the issue of electronic voting more sensibly than the crowd of "electro-Paddies" which purchased machines software without testing them. What will the Minister do with the machines? He has stated that they will not be used in the next general election, so what is to become of them? Will the Minister find some place, such as Zimbabwe or Florida, which may need the assistance of these machines? The machines could be sold as a job lot and we could at least cut our losses. We would not have to pay the €750,000 cost of storing the machines every year. It is time to cut our losses on the botched electronic voting system.

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