Election officials charging State to store electronic vote machines
Friday February 11 2005
They are then charging the State rent for the storage, the Irish Independent has learned.
One returning officer who, along with his daughter, bought and converted a warehouse is getting €65,000 a year to store the machines in Dublin city.
He is not the only returning officer to have privately purchased property to store the machines - at least one other is also the registered owner.
Brendan Walsh, the Dublin City Chief Returning Officer in charge of six constituencies, confirmed yesterday that he had bought an industrial premises ith his daughter, solicitor Cara Walsh.
Mr Walsh, returning officer for the past 10 years, defended the annual storage costs of €65,000 a year for 777 e-voting machines as "a bargain" and denied that he stood make any profit.
"I bought a place, I adapted it. When all the figures come in, I think it will just about wash its face," he said.
It is understood the rent element accounts for about €35,000 and the remainder is made up of insurance, rates, service charges and electricity.
The returning officer and his daughter bill the city's returning officer, who is Mr Walsh himself, for the cost of storing the e-voting machines. The money is then recouped from the Department of Finance.
"B Walsh and C Walsh bill B Walsh," he said yesterday. "There is no profit."
Mr Walsh said their decision to buy the facility was taken after he spent over a year trying to find a suitable premises on the open market - he said he spent thousands of euro of his own money in the quest.
"We didn't find a single premises that was the right size, that had a lift to take them (the voting machines) up. or that was readily accessible from a distribution point of view. We just got very frustrated and eventually this premises came up," he said.
Mr Walsh added: "I have no doubt that it will stand up to full scrutiny. The State is not paying a penny more than it would to a property company on the open market. The State is getting a bargain. The €65,000 includes rent and all the other services for which they paid including security, light, heat and rates.
"If and when the Comptroller and Auditor General or the Department of Finance ask me to account for it I will have no difficulty in accounting for it. I was professionally advised as to what the rent would be. I am absolutely satisfied that I have everything covered.
"Brendan Walsh is paying market rent. It's what Brendan Walsh was asked to do," he said.
"I believe other sheriffs got their own premises."
The Dail Committee on Public Accounts has been told that there was no uniform approach by the Department of the Environment to securing insurance and storage, and the job of securing quotes was left to individual officers.
He said he didn't care if he was called before the Comptroller and Auditor General as a value for money comparison of the storage costs for all constituencies would show him to be in the top three.
A league table of the annual storage costs for the e-voting machines shows that the biggest cost is in Mr Walsh's Dublin city constituency where it costs €65,000 to store 777. However, this is not unexpected given the constituency has the largest number of machines to store.
The second highest annual cost, €62,939, is in Dublin County where the second biggest amount of machines, 768 are stored.
Figures reveal that it cost €658,229 to store 7,504 e-voting machines every year.
- Treacy HoganEnvironment Correspondent
