Sheila Terry (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State. I welcome the Interim Report of the Commission on Electronic Voting on the Secrecy, Accuracy and Testing of the Chosen Electronic Voting System. It makes for interesting reading. The report's executive summary states:

On the basis of its review of expert reports, submissions received and other relevant information to date, the Commission finds that it is not in a position to recommend with the requisite degree of confidence the use of the chosen system at elections in Ireland in June 2004.

The bottom line is that this is a matter of confidence. If we do not have confidence in the system we use, we cannot have confidence in the results it produces. Our voting system is the basis of our democracy. If we cannot trust it, we have nothing. As someone who contested the last general election in the Dublin West constituency, I have to say that I find it difficult to have confidence in the result, having read the interim report. I do not question that the candidates who were elected were rightly elected — it is not a question of sour grapes — but I find it difficult to trust the system that was used. We know that errors have been shown up and that there were discrepancies in the counts in the Dublin West and Dublin North constituencies. In one case, the number of votes recorded by the machines was greater than the number of people who voted. In the other case, the number of people who entered polling stations was greater than the number of votes registered as having been cast.

I am not sure if many Senators have read the interesting report produced by a returning officer, Mr. John Fitzpatrick. I hope we take on board the recommendations made by Mr. Fitzpatrick when we finally introduce an electronic voting system. While we accept that things can go wrong during a pilot scheme, we should bear in mind that we are dealing with individuals. We now know that we were not ready to introduce an electronic voting system in 2002. Mr. Fitzpatrick's report highlighted certain matters, such as the fact that in the Dublin West constituency "one module was found to have been left in the election office in Glasnevin." Those who have read the report will be aware that the module did not contain any votes, as it turned out, but such a haphazard way of working is unacceptable. The module turned up eventually.

Mr. Fitzpatrick continued:

In Dublin North one module was also found to be missing but was discovered within two or three minutes having been left with the incoming envelopes and not passed on to the readers. In Dublin West it was found that the first attempt at mixing and numbering completed far too rapidly and it took some time to discover that this was because one step had been missed out in the procedure for transferring results from the reader machines to the master PC for processing. In both constituencies the mixing and numbering procedure failed to finish at the first attempt.

He gave further details of such problems and highlighted many other areas in which he feels improvements need to be made. The type of human error he outlined does not inspire confidence in me or in many voters. We should not proceed with the system until we are absolutely sure that it is safe and will record votes accurately. For that reason, I welcome the report of the Commission on Electronic Voting.

The Minister, Deputy Cullen, insisted that the new system should be pursued and maintained that it was safe. It was quite unacceptable that he used all kinds of names to refer to those who questioned him. He has been proven to be wrong. He and his Government colleagues have been left with egg on their faces.

I do not intend to say much more about the matter. I ask the Minister of State, Deputy Gallagher, to ask the Commission on Electronic Voting to re-examine the counts in the Dublin West and Dublin North constituencies in 2002. The commission has said that it does not have any reason to believe that votes were not counted accurately on that occasion, but I do not share its confidence in that regard. Is it the case that the votes cannot be checked because the discs are no longer available? I presume that they have been destroyed. There is no way that should have happened. I am glad that the new system will not be used in June. Senator Brady said he has not met anybody who does not like the system.