The Government will eventually have to write off its €50 million investment in electronic voting, the chairman of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee has forecast. Martin Wall reports.
Speaking in advance of the committee's inquiry today into expenditure on the project, Mr Michael Noonan said that given the criticisms of the security and accuracy of the system which were outlined in the report of the Independent Commission on Electronic Voting, he doubted that there would ever be sufficient public confidence to allow it to be implemented.
Mr Noonan and other committee members will ask the secretary general of the Department of Environment, Mr Niall Callan, this morning why the criticisms over the security and accuracy of the system set out in the commission report had not been anticipated in advance of the €50 million contract being signed.
He is also expected to be questioned about the bill for storing the e-voting machines, which some critics have claimed is costing around €2 million a year.
"I cannot see how in the light of the commission's report that we can proceed with the electronic voting system. We will end up writing the whole thing off," Mr Noonan said.
Given the doubts over the accuracy and security of the system there would be "massive demand" for a paper record, and technical experts had advised the commission that the equipment could be modified to provide this.
"It will be a brave minister who will give the go-ahead for electronic voting using the current system.
"Even if the Department could deal with the IT problems and carry out full testing to ensure the security of the system, given the doubts raised I do not think that there would be the public confidence to allow it to be used in an election," Mr Noonan told The Irish Times.
The introduction of electronic voting has effectively been put on hold following the report of the commission, although the Government believes that the technical problems outlined could be resolved in the future. Mr Noonan said the commission report had raised some serious issues.
Included in these was the fact that the technology involved dated back to the 1980s; that no parallel testing had been carried out which would have allowed an electronic and paper election to be run side by side; and that viruses could have been introduced into the system which would have distorted the real vote.
Another committee member, Mr Joe Higgins of the Socialist Party, said last night that he would be questioning Mr Callan about the role played by the former minister for the environment, Mr Cullen, and his predecessor, Mr Dempsey, in driving the move toward electronic voting.