Analysis: The Government says electronic voting is coming in June and nothing can go wrong, reports Mark Brennock, Chief Political Correspondent.
What is the hurry? Pat Rabbitte asked the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, the question three times yesterday in the Dáil but got no answer. The Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, was asked the same question at a press briefing last night and did not give a direct answer either.
The response from both was simply to say this was what they always intended to do, and therefore this is what they would proceed to do. Those raising doubts about the system of electronic voting to be used throughout the State in June were bringing up bogus points, and did not understand the system chosen by the Government, they said.
The Taoiseach dismissed Fine Gael's spokesman, Mr Bernard Allen, as wanting "to keep old ways, old things, the old nonsensical past". The message from Mr Ahern and Mr Cullen was clear: "Nothing can go wrong."
This has not been a unanimous view in Government in recent days. Ministers have watched with growing concern as the Opposition, supported by various "experts", suggested there were a variety of things that could indeed go wrong. The Opposition demanded a print-out of each vote as a back-up. People wondered what would happen if there was a power cut, or a power surge, or why the computer code on how votes would be counted had not been made public, or whether the machine would go mad altogether if a voter had a magnet in his or her pocket.
The view in the offices of the Taoiseach and the Minister for the Environment is that most of this was what one figure last night colourfully described as "mischievous bullshit".
If the Government was to concede to what it regards as contrived and opportunistic arguments on this issue, it would be forced to climb down on all sorts of other initiatives in the future, they believed.
However, some Ministers are understood to have been less sure and in advance of yesterday's Cabinet meeting are believed to have been open to a decision to compromise. Rather than introduce the system throughout the State in June, some Government sources expected a larger pilot scheme than in the past together with the setting up of an independent commission to oversee the complete transition to electronic voting before the next general election, about two years later than originally planned.
Such speculation had grown last week along with the controversy over the system, while Mr Cullen was away on EU business in Asia. Yesterday Mr Cullen was determined that the Cabinet would not back down on the determination to introduce the system.
He has invested Government money and personal political capital in the introduction of e-voting. He was going to do all he could to avoid becoming the latest Minister to be forced into a U-turn by an Opposition campaign and media scrutiny.
Of course Mr Cullen did not suggest that his determination to press ahead, despite the public airing of doubts, had anything to do with preserving his image or his ego. Rather it was to ensure that the 70,000 people who spoiled their votes in the last European and local elections - almost all inadvertently he insisted - did not do so again. The new system would ensure that they did not, he said.
He will have been relieved by the Taoiseach's robust defence of the new system in the Dáil yesterday, during which Mr Ahern suggested that its opponents were Luddites raising objections to basic push-button technology.
However, the Government's determination to press ahead against widespread political opposition will ensure the legislation promised to enshrine the new system in law gets a difficult passage through the Oireachtas. Fine Gael and Labour last night expressed outrage that the Government would proceed with a major change to the voting system without the agreement of the Opposition.
Today or tomorrow, the Government expects to announce who will sit on the new Electronic Voting Commission. Mr Cullen said last night that when the public saw who was on it, there would be nobody claiming it was going to be a pro-Government mouthpiece. By May 1st the commission will produce a report, and if at that stage it says the new system will not do what it is supposed to do, then the old voting system will be used in June.
But it was clear from Mr Cullen last night that he saw no prospect whatsoever of this outcome.