Website on e-voting machines, despite project being shelved

A DEPARTMENT of the Environment website demonstrating how to use electronic voting machines is still in operation despite the project being abandoned last year, it has emerged.

Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government John Gormley said the website www.electronicvoting.ie remained in place to assist a taskforce in disposing of the equipment and ending storage arrangements for the machines.

Mr Gormley told Labour environment spokesman CiaráLynch that the "design and development costs for the website in 2004 were €40,257. The annual cost in 2009 in respect of hosting the website, including domain name registration, was €1,881."

Mr Lynch insisted however that there was no reason to maintain the website and even though the annual maintenance cost of €1,881 was "small beer", it showed the "procrastination, prevarication and lack of leadership since the e- voting machines were introduced and again in disposing of them".

The Cork South Central TD criticised the Minister because, "rather than acknowledging that he had been caught offside and that the website should have been taken down, he is dressing it up in a pretence that it has a function".

A number of the voting machines were used in the 2002 general election in a pilot project in the Dublin North and Meath constituencies, but none has been used since.

Mr Gormley said in a written reply to a parliamentary question from the Labour Party spokesman that since his announcement in April 2009 that electronic voting would not go ahead, a taskforce to oversee the disposal of the machines had met three times.

The priority was to "pursue the most economically advantageous approach" to achieve "the maximum recovery of cost possible in the circumstances".

Mr Gormley added: "Pending completion of arrangements for the disposal of the machines, the website . . . is still operational to assist in this process."

However Mr Lynch said the taskforce had no deadline for the completion of its work.

"We've been working on this for years." The taskforce was looking for proposals to deal with the machines. "They should ask any five-year-old what they would do with a PlayStation and they'll get their answer."

While some 60 per cent of machines were in storage in the Curragh, 40 per cent were in storage on lease agreements, some lasting for 25 to 30 years, even though the machines themselves only had a 20-year shelf life, Mr Lynch said.

In a number of cases involved, "the longer leases were more expensive than shorter leases, which is against all normal business practice".