The independent Government-appointed body that probed electronic voting may have breached its terms of references by sending its report to the Minister for the Environment four days before the Ceann Comhairle received it, it was claimed tonight.

The pronouncement by the cross-party Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that the abandoned e-voting system is a “dead duck” was very apposite, but too late to prevent the wanton waste it was, and still is, even posthumously.