Eight years after they were acquired for €52m, the government wants to return 7,500 barely used electronic voting machines to their manufacturer.

John Gormley, the environment minister, announced last March that he had set up an inter-departmental taskforce to deal with the disposal of the machines, after deciding they would never be used to count votes in an Irish election. The taskforce has met three times.

Suggestions that the government could sell the machines to a third party seem to have proved optimistic.

“We’re looking at Nedap, the manufacturers, who are going to take them back and that’s the process we are engaged in right now,” Gormley said on RTE Radio.

The minister insisted his decision to scrap the e-voting machines was designed to save taxpayers’ money. “I think that was a good decision,” he said. “I looked at it, I took my time. I said ‘these machines are not going to be used’.”

A spokesman for the minister confirmed that returning the machines to Nedap “is an option that is being examined” but said discussions were “at preliminary stage”. It is not known whether Nedap, a Dutch manufacturer, would be paid a fee for reclaiming the 7,500 voting machines.

The intellectual property rights for the software on the machines mean the government cannot simply sell them elsewhere, even if a buyer could be found. The machines, purchased in 2002 by Martin Cullen, the then environment minister, are said to be generations out of date.

The Department of the Environment estimates that it would cost €14m to bring the machines up to a specification that would enable them to be used. This would involve adding a paper audit trail.

More than 60% of the machines — 4,762 in total — have been moved to Gormanston army barracks for storage.

The cost of storage for the rest of the machines in 2008 was €204,000.