Ahern sparks jeers over ‘excellent’ electronic voting machines
He was responding to Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, who had listed a string of promises which he claimed the Government had broken.
Among these promises was that the €52 million spent on the electronic voting machines would prove money well spent.
Mr Kenny recalled the words of Transport Minister Martin Cullen, who, in his previous role as Environment Minister, had assured voters: “The €52 million investment by this Government on behalf of the taxpayers is absolutely secure and we will see those machines used.”
The system was actually used on a pilot basis in a number of constituencies in the 2002 general election and in second Nice Referendum the same year.
But it was mothballed after the independent Commission on Electronic Voting said, prior to the 2004 local and European elections, that it did not have requisite confidence in the system.
Since then, further question marks have been raised about the machines, and the current Environment Minister, Dick Roche, has long since admitted they won’t be used in this year’s election.
Yesterday, however, the Taoiseach attempted to defend the Government’s purchase of the machines. His remarks provoked howls of laughter and derision from the opposition benches.
“The voting machines worked quite well in the last election — excellently well,” Mr Ahern insisted, before telling Mr Kenny: “You’re afraid of them. You want to go back... to the paper and pencils.
“Even though we’re a country of technology, [Fine Gael] would rather go back to the old way — a haon, a dó, a trí; use the pencils.
“[If] we keep going that way, we’ll all be unemployed again.”
Mr Kenny also accused the Government of breaking its promise to build a Metro link to Dublin Airport by 2007 to relieve the traffic problems on the M50. Instead, there was no Metro and the M50 had become a “€750 million car park”.
