Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

On the latest developments on electronic voting, two Ministers persisted with the purchase of equipment costing €52 million that has never been used in a general or local election. That is €52 million of taxpayers' money down the drain in one of the biggest examples of waste by this Government.

It is worth recalling that a number of experts outside this House warned both former Ministers with this responsibility, Deputies Noel Dempsey and Cullen, about the disastrous road on which they were embarked, but they dismissed and ignored that advice. They ignored the request for an all-party committee that warned that this would be the logical conclusion of where they were going. Then the Minister, Deputy Noel Dempsey, thought up the bright idea and his successor, Deputy Cullen, insisted on implementing it, no matter what the objections or reservations on this side of the House and no matter what the expert evidence submitted by people outside this House.

After wasting €52 million of taxpayers' money, we now find it is costing us just short of €700,000 per annum to store these machines the present Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche, has said will not be used in the next general election. That same Minister has mooted the idea of storing these machines centrally and has found out that we will have to pay a ransom of millions to buy out the leases committed to for the storage of machines we will never use. In County Monaghan, the returning officer has entered into a lease for 25 years at €25,865 per annum, although the lifetime of the machine is 20 years.

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