Labour urges Gormley to end e-voting 'fiasco'

THE LABOUR Party spokeswoman on the environment, Joanna Tuffy TD, has called for an end "to the saga of electronic voting that has proven to be such a spectacular waste of public money".

Accounts laid before the Dáil last week, she said, showed that in its three years of operation, the Commission on Electronic Voting cost €1.89 million - more than half of which, €1.04 million, was taken up by consultancy fees.

"We now need to find a process to bring this sorry saga to an end, recover what money we can and ensure that no more money is wasted."

Ms Tuffy said the commission published two reports but could not restore public confidence in a system that was "so flawed and open to potential abuse".

The expenditure of €1.89 million on the commission, which was not previously disclosed, must now be added to the growing burden that the "fiasco" has put on the taxpayer. The original cost of the development and introduction of the project amounted to €51.3 million and storage costs so far have amounted to close to €3 million.

The electronic voting machines would never be used again, Ms Tuffy said, and she called on Minister for the Environment John Gormley to say so publicly. She presumed he wasn't doing so "for fear of embarrassing his Fianna Fáil ministerial colleagues, Noel Dempsey and Martin Cullen, who landed us in this mess".

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times