Following concerns about aspects of the Government's 152 million electronic voting system, the Government established in early 2004 an independent Commission on Electronic Voting (CEV) to advise on the secrecy and accuracy of the proposed system, which had been used on a pilot basis in three constituencies in the 2002 general election and a number of constituencies during the Nice referendum.
Chaired by retired judge Matthew P Smith, it also includes: clerk of the Dáil Kieran Coughlan, clerk of Seanad Éireann Deirdre Lane, chairman of the Information Society Commission Dr Danny O'Hare, and chairman of Science Foundation Ireland
Brian Sweeney. Its report in early May 2004 stated that it could not recommend its use in the June 2004 local and European elections because insufficient testing had been carried out on the system at that stage.It was then asked to provide a fuller report and to oversee a range of technical tests on the system's security and accuracy.It produced an interim report in late 2004 and its final report yesterday. The commission has spent more than 12 million on its work, most of it on outside experts and consultants who carried out rigorous tests on the machines.