Michael Kitt (Fianna Fail)

The issue, to which the Minister of State referred last night, of two systems giving different results is a serious one. During the debate on Second Stage it was made clear that many errors had occurred in the manual voting system. Seats have changed hands on a margin of fewer than 50 votes.

Electronic voting will eliminate inadvertent voting errors. There are people, obviously, who want the opportunity to spoil their votes. The experience in the constituencies where electronic voting was used in the general election and the Nice referendum was that inadvertent voting errors were eliminated. I cannot see how the parallel system proposed by Senator Bannon could work.