Opposition parties have called on the Government to scrap plans for electronic voting after a Dutch judge ruled that the use of the machines in recent elections in the Netherlands had not been properly authorised.
The Dutch maker of the machines, Nedap, had already suffered a setback as a result of an official report in the Netherlands late last month that criticised the transparency of e-voting.
Labour and Fine Gael say the developments should seal the fate of the controversial scheme and have called on Minister for the Environment John Gormley to scrap it.
A spokesman for the Department of the Environment said last night the Minister was aware of the Dutch court decision. He said Mr Gormley told the Dáil recently that he was examining the best way forward in relation to e-voting. Ireland paid €52 million for 7,500 Nedap e-voting machines in 2004, but they have remained in mothballs ever since. Most of the machines are stored in an Army hangar in Co Meath.
A Dutch administrative judge this week ruled that the machines had not been properly authorised for use in the country's recent elections. The election result would stand, but the Dutch government would need to change legislation to allow the use of the machines, the judge said.
A spokesman for Nedap said the judgment related to an administrative error, and had no bearing on the accuracy of the machines, or on their use in the Republic. "The integrity of the machines is not at all at stake," said Matthias Schippers, Nedap's market group leader of election systems. The Irish and Dutch voting systems were totally different, he said. In the Netherlands, voting data is processed electronically at the polling centre, whereas in Ireland the votes must be counted at a separate location, he added.
Nevertheless, the Labour Party has used the judgment to criticise e-voting pointing out that the annual storage costs for the 7,500 machines are costing the Irish taxpayer €700,000 a year.
"The finding by a Dutch court that the e-voting system in place in the Netherlands was legally deficient, must prompt environment Minister John Gormley into making a decision one way or the other on the future of e-voting in Ireland," said Labour's environment spokesman Ciarán Lynch.
He said the findings of the court utterly vindicated the vigorous campaign the Labour Party mounted in opposition to the Fianna Fáil e-voting scheme.
"The Government consistently ignored the concerns we first raised when electronic voting was first mooted. They were determined to proceed with the system despite there being no public appetite for electronic voting," Mr Lynch said.
Fine Gael called for the scrapping of the system. Party environment spokesman Phil Hogan said the Government had wasted tens of millions on the e-voting project.
It was claimed last year that the machines could be accessed by hackers. Some hackers had even been able to download video games on to the machines, it was also claimed.
According to a report released late last month by a former Dutch minister, the voting machines were not secure because they did not have a verifiable paper trail.
The Independent Commission on Electronic Voting concluded last year that Ireland's 7,500 voting machines were usable, subject to modifications and further rigorous testing.