John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

I have no intention of hiding behind any report. I said when I was in Opposition that I was in favour of electronic voting, in principle. I do not know Fine Gael's stance, in principle, on electronic voting. We need to ascertain whether electronic voting is effective and whether we can gain public confidence in it. I hope the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government can examine those matters, just as the Commission on Electronic Voting considered a number of issues in its report. While the possibility of providing for a voter verifiable audit trail was outside the thrust of the commission's report, most of the submissions which were received related to it so it was addressed in some detail. We have to examine whether we can give the public confidence in electronic voting, which is a matter that is being examined by the Department. We have spent approximately €51.3 million on these machines. That is a lot of money and I am not inclined to throw it away. I would like to see electronic voting working and to see if we can modify those machines. It would appear from the CEV report that they can be modified, but to what extent? A crucial question for me is whether we can get added value.

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