Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I agree totally with Senator Brian Hayes's point regarding electronic voting systems. If Members opposite are interested, I will show them the websites where they can read reports on failures of the new electronic voting systems used in the United States since the last presidential election. There is documented evidence in this regard. Unless one knows nothing about computers, one knows they make mistakes. They are not perfect and can go wrong, and anybody who believes otherwise is living in cloud cuckoo land. Therefore, it is necessary to provide a back-up. If the Government is saying that it is not prepared to answer questions, the Opposition is entitled to ask why. It is profoundly dangerous to transform the system of elections when the Opposition has legitimate evidence and questions about the reliability of the system. At this stage I am not implying a sinister motive on the part of Government. The Minister is determined to do something, perhaps because it is cheaper or he wants to prove he is modern. The fundamental aspect is that people should trust elections. If something goes wrong in next June's elections, people will no longer trust the electoral system. There is no reason not to answer the questions and deal with the issues. The Minister is waving his hands and saying everyone thinks it is perfect. We have heard this from Departments about other issues when we were told everything was perfect. Landfills were perfect until people looked at the rest of Europe and they turned out to be appalling places. Departments are wrong as often as they are right and, therefore, we are entitled to answers to our questions.

The financial returns for January were published recently. People are being told there is no money for a dozen different things, yet we discover that the Government spent less money in some areas this January than it did the previous January. I would like the Minister to come to the House because we all know what is going on. A war chest is being stashed up which will be released in time for the elections. The Government is play-acting with the state of the public finances, something which should not be done.