Paul Bradford (Fine Gael)

I want to revisit the issue of electronic voting which I have raised on a number of occasions. In a little more than four months hundreds of thousands of people will cast their verdicts on thousands of candidates by way of electronic voting machines. We all welcome the concept of electronic voting, but we must recognise that there are grave concerns about the system it is proposed to use next June. Reports which have been commissioned indicate that the electronic voting machines could be open to abuse. We owe it to the democratic system and to every candidate to ensure the system we use is beyond reproach. I ask the Leader to organise a full debate on the matter to which the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government could contribute. We could then put to him the serious concerns about the possibility of the machines being tampered with and false results being given. Democracy is so vital and valuable that everything about it must be beyond reproach and beyond question. There are so many questions being asked of the electronic voting system we intend using that a full and frank debate is necessary.