The Minister for the Environment, Mr Roche, has conceded that the electronic voting system bought for €50 million might have to be radically changed before it could be introduced in future elections.
After strong criticism of the system, which was dropped before the elections last June, Mr Roche said the Government would have to take measures to ensure the public had confidence in it before it was introduced.
The options under scrutiny included the possibility of introducing "physical add-ons" to the machines already purchased, he said. These included the possibility of attaching printers to the machines to create a paper trail of votes cast. These could be manually counted if there was a dispute over the outcome of a poll.
Another option was publication of the proprietary code in the software that powers the machines, he said.
Mr Roche said there was a public perception that there was "something negative" with the system.
"Sooner rather than later, we're going to have electronic voting because there's a lot of positives, not least in our own proportional representation system," he said.
While such a system would produce a more accurate reflection of the public will, Mr Roche said he did not know whether it would be possible to use the system in the next general election.
In addition, he did not believe the system would be the subject of further testing in the Meath and Kildare North by-elections.
The problems with the current system concerned public confidence and not the technical elements of the system, which had already been tested, Mr Roche said on RTÉ's Morning Ireland programme yesterday.
