Opposition reaction: Electronic voting will be "very difficult" to introduce in the future following the damage done to public confidence by the findings of the Commission on Electronic Voting, the Labour Party has said.
Joining the call for the Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, to resign, Labour's Mr Eamon Gilmore said the Government's "arrogant" conduct would raise public suspicions.
"I think a lot of people will think that an increasingly unpopular Government was trying to do 'a Robert Mugabe' on the Irish people," said Mr Gilmore, Labour's environment spokesman.
"Minister Cullen totally ignored all the valid concerns raised not just by the opposition parties, but also by virtually every technical expert who expressed a view," he said.
Despite the doubts, the Minister spent €52 million of taxpayers' money on a system that cannot be used in the local and European elections and "which may never be suitable to be used".
The commission's discovery that the final version of the computer software due to have been used in June had not been checked was "absolutely incredible", Mr Gilmore said.
Fine Gael's Mr Bernard Allen said: "Minister Cullen pushed ahead with this system in an arrogant manner and refused to allow any comprehensive debate. Yet the commission has now deemed that this very system is unacceptable."
Mr Allen said the Minister had committed a huge amount of taxpayers' money, including €5 million on a publicity campaign, consistently ignoring the warnings and concerns of the Opposition.
"He has fiddled around recklessly with the most important part of our democracy, our electoral system. Anything between €40 million and €50 million of taxpayer's money has been committed to machines which will not be used.
"But even more serious is the fact that this Government was trying to foist an unreliable and unsecure voting system onto the electorate," the Fine Gael environment spokesperson said.
The Green leader, Mr Trevor Sargent, said Minister Cullen had behaved with "a volatile combination of arrogance and naivety" and said he must stand down.
His party colleague, Mr Ciaran Cuffe, proposed the creation of an independent electoral commission to run all future elections and referendums.
Mr Cuffe said the joint Oireachtas committee on the environment, heritage and local government had raised the same doubts last December but Fianna Fáil members on the committee had "cynically overturned" the committee's work so that the Minister could go ahead and buy the voting machines.
"The committee heard presentations from a number of eminent IT professionals and academics, and neither the Department nor the suppliers were able to answer the questions raised," Mr Cuffe said.
Sinn Féin Louth TD, Mr Arthur Morgan, welcomed the findings, saying they vindicated the position the party had adopted at an early stage. Mr Cullen had attempted to stifle the debate around the introduction of electronic voting and its potential dangers and implications.
"He arrogantly dismissed concerns raised by computer science experts, members of the public and Opposition parties. The absence of a verifiable voter trail and the failure to publish the source code represented fatal flaws in the Government's plans for the introduction of e-voting."
Mr Morgan said that during the Dáil debate on the Electoral Amendment Bill 2004, Mr Cullen said he would accept responsibility if the system was proved to be flawed or insecure. "It is clear now that Minister Cullen's position is completely untenable and he must go," he added.
