The Government has ordered 300 extra voting machines for June's local and European Parliament elections, at a cost of approximately €15 million.
In a letter in early January the Department of the Environment said: "The items are required as early as possible and before the end of April." The decision to buy extra machines from their UK manufacturer, Powervote, was taken after returning officers expressed fears that they did not have enough.
The Government originally ordered 6,500 machines, at a cost of about €6,000 each, along with computers and counting software. Explaining the decision to the Department of Finance, the Department of the Environment said the extra machines were "necessary".
The head of Environment's Franchise Section, Mr Peter Greene, said: "With the multiple returns, it is very difficult to estimate how long voters will take to vote on three ballot papers.
"This will be influenced by turnout and the effectiveness of the publicity and awareness campaign. The machines will be replacing about 14,000 polling booths."
Intriguingly, the letter went on: "There are strong indications that there may be a further ballot paper at the June polls. This would increase time of voters at voting machines." The latter point is interesting because the Government has at the time publicly ruled out the possibility of a referendum.
Mr Greene went on: "It is prudent to have a strategic reserve in case of accidents and also for future use. The time delivery for voting machines in the future will be longer as production is not continuous.
"Returning offices will pay for the voting machines etc out of their advances for conducting next June's elections," he told the Department of Finance.
The Government is also buying 6,500 ballot modules, which are used to store vote details, to deal with the presidential election due in October.
The modules used in June cannot be reused because they must be stored for six months, as paper ballots currently are, so that they can be checked if legal actions follow.
Electronic voting, excluding training costs, should now cost the Exchequer €60 million.
