Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I am advised there is no such difficulty because it was not seen as the authentic version of the legislation and this is the case in common law countries. While the intention is to have each Act since 1922 stored in the correct form, as passed in this House, along with chronological tables and statutory instruments, it is not the authoritative version used in judgments in this and other countries.

Regarding Deputy Sargent's query, a legal position has been taken and it is not a question of the technology involved. I do not know that the issue of supplying the authentic version of legislation on-line has been addressed in Tasmania as completely as the Deputy suggests, but I will bring the matter to the attention of those involved here.

The object of introducing a company to work with our South African colleagues, Juta Publishing Limited, the original contractor, is to correct the error. Deputy Jim O'Keeffe suggested there were errors, but it was a print over — the data was caused by the insertion of hyperlinks. In layman's language that refers to referencing parts of the Act directly by clicking links and this facility was added as part of the process that caused data to be overwritten. It was not a question of parts of the Act being taken out; the information was overwritten. This rendered that section of chronological tables and statutory instruments fairly meaningless as the relevant links gave the wrong information. I understand the other parts are still usable. It is important to get this right and several other sections in other CD-ROMs have been checked in this regard. The CD-ROM in question, which has been updated three times, contains all the legislation from 1922 to 1997, all statutory instruments and all chronological tables and is hugely beneficial.

There is no difficulty with the latest update of the Internet version, comprising of Acts to the end of 2005, and 350 statutory instruments and chronological tables to the end of 2004. Hopefully the problems relating to the other Acts will be fixed in the coming months, however none of these on-line versions are the authoritative versions of an Act. I do not know when the electronic version will be the authoritative version or when such a decision will be made, and we will probably observe other common law jurisdictions to see how the issue is approached.

The contract is to be signed before Christmas and hopefully the work will begin after Christmas. The Secretary General in the Office of the Attorney General told me his staff are very anxious to do this work in the new year and have the matter rectified as soon as possible so that all legislation from 1922 to the end of 2004 is on CD-ROM.

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