The infamous E-voting machines of the noughties are now officially worthless

Remember all that money that the Government spent on those new E-voting machines that never saw the light of day, except in three constituencies in 2002? Well according to Michael Noonan, they are now completely worthless.

RTE reports that an estimated €51 million was spent on the machines before the decision to scrap them was made – never mind the added costs of storage and maintenance (although why they needed maintenance if they were never going to be used is anyone’s guess).

Originally, a nationwide roll-out of the machines was supposed to begin in 2004, just in time for European and local elections. However, after a few concerns were raised about the security of the machines, this plan was quickly put on hold.

The government concluded that it would be too expensive (hah!) to make the required changes to the machine’s security, so naturally they tried to flog them off on another unsuspecting country but no one would buy.

In 2010, then Taoiseach Brian Cowen said the machines would be disposed of.

Speaking about the matter, Michael Noonan said that Fianna Fáil had been climbing the summit of hubris when they concluded “the peann luaidhe” was no longer fashionable.

“Fianna Fáil thought it would not be fashionable as Bertie (Ahern) said not to be ‘using the peann luaidhe’ any more and that you needed to have a hi-tech machine,” said the Minister for Finance.

“But when the hi-tech machine was checked out it didn’t do the job that it was supposed to do so the system was flawed. They are valueless now,” he added.

Michael Noonan believes that there might be a market for the defunct machines in Irish-themed pubs across the world. Awesome.

We have to ask, what was really wrong with the “peann luaidhe” in the first place?

By the way, we know the picture above isn't of the Irish machines but we just really love some of the candidates on this one.