Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

Perhaps in the long term it is what we should do, but people are still using the Acts as they are. Since then, the Office of the Attorney General has arranged for the publication of the Statute Book on the Internet for the past six years and it has been updated on three occasions. Therefore, there have been companies other than the South African firm involved in it.

The more recent updates include Acts, statutory instruments and chronological tables. They are not all incorrect. The error has been identified. The fact that these were updated and many people were using and referring to the CD-ROMs and chronological tables shows it was an official who was doing an entirely different job in the Attorney General's department who came across this, but it is an error that must be corrected.

The original contract cost just over €1 million. That was to put all the Acts from 1922 to 1997 on CD-ROM. The reason the error was not corrected straight away is that they had to, first, go back to those who were involved in the project initially and then follow through to those who were involved in the three subsequent updates to identify where the problem lay and identify responsibility for the problem, and then they had to put it out to tender. They wanted to get a local firm which could assist in this and went out to seven legal publishing companies.

They are now working on a contract with Thomson Round Hall to report on this. They have not yet determined the cost involved, but they have identified the error and how the issue can be dealt with. It is now a question of the company coming in to update this. Given that the recent extensive updates cost €150,000, it should not be that costly. It was a question of identifying the error.

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