DAIL SKETCH: Cowboys and Indians dominated the political shoot-out at leaders' questions in the Dáil yesterday, writes Michael O'Regan.
The subject was electronic voting.
"People want to move on," declared the Taoiseach. He pointed out to the Labour leader, Mr Pat Rabbitte, that in India, a country with many difficulties and a large middle-class, which had 850 million voters, they used e-voting in a few hundred thousand polling areas.
"God forbid, we want to keep away from counting a haon, a dó, a trí on paper in this day and age," he added. "That was the age of the bush in this country, and I hope that we are not arguing about that. We will not have that political argument when everyone in the House uses technology every day of the week." Mr Ahern sat down, staring at his notes, as he does these days, avoiding eye contact with the enemy. Mr Rabbitte rose and reached for his verbal revolver.
"It is not the Indians that worry me, but the cowboys opposite who are trying to impose a change in the electoral system unilaterally, as the Taoiseach did twice with the proportional representation system," he added.
Mr Ahern looked justifiably weary. After all, were those referendums not in the watch of previous Fianna Fáil taoisigh? The shoot-out became friendlier when Mr Rabbitte had a compliment for the Taoiseach. Mr Ahern, he declared, was a decent man, but he should not have rolled out the Tánaiste's director of elections on RTÉ Radio to tell people that the system was safe.
Mr Rabbitte referred to the Supreme Court ruling on the intoximeter.
"The machine is not susceptible to independent analysis or confirmation of findings," he added.
"Has the Taoiseach sought advice on the obvious implications of that decision for electronic voting ?" Mr Ahern said they were talking about people going into a polling booth to vote in a regulated election where there was modern technology. "It is an entirely regulated area," he added.
Perhaps, he said, Mr Rabbitte was worried about people being intoxicated when going to vote electronically.
"Their falling over themselves might be a problem, but that is not what we are talking about," he added.
It was a sober enough end to the exchanges on an issue which has led to heated debate in the chamber in recent weeks. But there will be many a shoot-out on the issue between now and the elections in June.