Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

——which I am sure the Taoiseach will acknowledge could have been better spent. It is two years since the Commission on Electronic Voting reported. It not only confirmed what those of us who had been critical of the particular system had said for a long time but added to it.

None of the Taoiseach's Ministers want to touch this. Every time the line Minister, Deputy Gormley, or his predecessors are asked about it, they run a mile. At some stage it will take a Minister to decide the inevitable on what we all know — these machines will not be used. Continuing to store them is adding more cost to the waste already incurred in the project. Somebody must decide to call it a day and that they will never be used. As the Taoiseach has a window for several weeks, he might unburden his ministerial colleagues with such a decision and write them off.

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