The Tánaiste has rejected claims that the new electronic voting system is untrustworthy, although she admitted she has a personal bias for the manual voting system.
Leading critics of the system claimed today that documents made available under Freedom of Information Act showed up flaws reported by officials when e-voting was used in a trial in several constituencies during the General Election two years ago.
The new system is set to be used on June 11th in the European Parliament and local elections, European Assembly and local authority contests and in the citizenship referendum. Opponents of the concept maintain that votes went missing in one e-poll constituency at the last election, while too many were counted in another.
However, Ms Mary Harney told Newstalk 106 this morning that while introducing e-voting was not top of her agenda, there were huge discrepancies in the manual system.
"I have a personal bias for the old system, slow and all and methodical and all as it was. I think the instant result is maybe something I'm not ready for as a candidate, believe it or not," she said.
"Certainly those that are pundits and like to do the tally are really disappointed. Although I like to think I'm progressive and modern, I'm not so certain I would've put this top of my priority. But the reality is that the Government have made a decision collectively to proceed."
Mr Colm McCarthaigh, of the Irish Citizens for Trustworthy e-voting organisation, told RTÉ Radio this morning the FoI data showed they had no idea whether the number of votes the electronic system registers is accurate.
"There is simply no end-to-end test whatsoever done by the system," he said today. "There are serious major discrepancies. There is no record of how many people actually turned up to vote, so we don't know if votes went missing or appeared out of nowhere."
But the new system was defended by Dublin County Sheriff John Fitzpatrick, who acts as returning officer in Co Dublin at elections. He said the reported errors had been due to paperwork mistakes by polling station staff that did not affect the final result.
"The pilot schemes were there to find problems with the system. They did that, and changes were made," Mr Fitzpatrick said. "I am quite happy with the system. There were problems with human error, but the glitches have been taken out."
Fine Gael party frontbencher Mr Bernard Allen said: "It is very worrying that this issue has effectively split public opinion. The Government is pushing ahead with an electronic voting system that does not have the confidence of the people."
A commission appointed to investigate electronic voting is due to report by May 1st to the Dáil Speaker, Dr Rory O'Hanlon, and the Government has said it has the freedom to recommend postponing the change. So far, a majority of submissions to the commission have urged a rethink on the planned change.