€57m e-voting system a ‘dead duck’

THE Government was last night under pressure to scrap its €57 million flagship e-voting system after it was branded a “dead duck” by a powerful cross-party committee of TDs.

The withering verdict on the electronic voting system, introduced by then Minister for the Environment Martin Cullen, looks set to seal the fate of a project which has been mired in controversy and failure.

The highly influential Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which includes a number of Fianna Fáil TDs, warned that keeping the 7,504 machines in mothballs would add a further €700,000 a year to the public bill pushing total costs up to 71m over the next 20 years.