Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 and 2 together.

I am satisfied that there are satisfactory procedures and facilities in place in my Department for the preservation and archiving of all records, whether in electronic or paper form or otherwise. My Department complies with the requirements of the National Archives Act 1986 which stipulates that all official records, regardless of their format, received or created by the Department of the Taoiseach must be preserved.

Specifically with regard to the preservation of records held in electronic form, all members of staff in my Department are provided with the appropriate ICT facilities to create and manage these records as part of the Department's work support system. All electronic records are stored on the Department's storage area network on which every individual staff member and every section is allocated space. The storage area network is backed up nightly with incremental backups, weekly with full backups that are stored for one month, monthly with full backups that are stored for at least 12 months and annually with full backups that are stored indefinitely.

Each staff member also has an individual e-mail file. These are backed up and stored as above. In addition, all e-mail messages in my Department are electronically stored using an e-mail archiving product that captures all e-mail messages into a secure e-mail archive.

See this speech in context