Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)
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Question 6: To ask the Taoiseach the problems encountered in the development of on-line legislation systems; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34124/06]

Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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Question 7: To ask the Taoiseach the steps which are being taken to rectify the serious data errors on the Irish Statute Book website maintained by the Office of the Attorney General; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35667/06]

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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Question 8: To ask the Taoiseach if his attention has been drawn to a number of errors in the electronic version of the Irish Statute Book available on the website of the Office of the Attorney General; the steps being taken to have these errors corrected; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [36472/06]

Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 6 to 8, inclusive, together.

In 1996, at the request of the then Attorney General, his office took on the task of preparing an electronic Irish Statute Book, eISB. The first release in CD-ROM format was in December 1998 in respect of the Acts for 1922 to 1997. Since then, the office arranged for the publication of the eISB on the Internet in September 2000, updating of the Internet site on three occasions and the publication of an updated CD-ROM version on two further occasions. The more recent updating included Acts, statutory instruments and chronological tables.

In August 2006, the office published the latest update to the Internet version comprising the Acts to the end of 2005, statutory instruments to No. 350 of 2005 and chronological tables to the statutes to the end of 2004. During the update process, the eISB project team established that a systematic error had occurred on a selection of the data contained in the Acts and statutory instruments for the period 1922 to 1998. This data error was caused by the insertion of hyperlinks, or direct clickable links to referenced parts of an Act or statutory instrument, during the process of publishing the CD-ROM version of the eISB in 1999 which caused some data to be overwritten. No such data errors have been located in post-1998 data.

The original contractor, Juta Publishing Limited of South Africa, was contacted and requested to furnish an explanation as to the nature and precise cause of the data error. This was received by the Office of the Attorney General.

After the problem came to light, the Office of the Attorney General arranged for an additional disclaimer to be added to the eISB Internet site explaining the data error problem and setting out two examples of the error. Relevant e-mail circulation lists were sent details of the data error and a notice was published in the Law Gazette and Bar Review publications. Other organisations that may have used the eISB data for 1922 to 1998 as a source of legislation were also informed.

The office discussed the provision of a solution internally as well as requesting CMOD to investigate and provide recommendations as to potential solutions.

The office sought submissions from external legal publishing companies to advise on the feasibility and costs involved in the application of the CMOD recommendations or on suitable alternative options to providing a solution to the data error problem. Expert advice is also being sought on the provision of best practices to ensure data accuracy and verification during the production process for publishing legislation. The office expects to engage a publishing company shortly and the explanation provided by Juta Publishing Limited, as referred to, will be made available to assist that process. It is expected that a report will be available from the publishing company by the end of January 2007.

Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)
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It is interesting to return to this issue following the questions last November when, it is fair to say, the Taoiseach did not really appreciate the scale of the problem we had at the time. I am glad of his reply to the effect that some action has been undertaken. However, the issue really is whether the Taoiseach accepts we still have a problem if the on-line version of legislation in the Irish Statute Book is not dependable and people need to consult hard copy to get the verifiable version.

Does the Taoiseach accept this indicates that much money is being spent at present on a system that is not useable? This amounts to considerable wastage of taxpayers' money. This is not the first time Members have discussed the waste of taxpayers' money with regard to electronic communication matters. Can an end be seen to this debacle?

The Taoiseach mentioned other jurisdictions and the example of Tasmania is worth considering. It has undertaken to designate the electronic Statute Book as the authentic version. Can the Taoiseach envisage Ireland being able to provide assurances that the electronic version is the authentic version? Can the Taoiseach compare the cost in Tasmania of providing a level of service in which the electronic version is the authentic one, with what is spent in Ireland to provide a system that essentially is useless as far as providing a verifiable electronic form of the Statute Book is concerned? If not, I ask him to examine the matter. How much work must still be done before one can state the on-line version is verifiable?

Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)
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The work on the full CD-ROM was finished in 1998. The error was only discovered last year by an official working in the section and it then took the office some time to ascertain the precise scale of the problem. This has all been done. Obviously, the officials have been back and forth with Juta Publishing Limited, the South African firm which did all of the work on this. In the main, international people worked on the project because it was the first time we had done a job like this.

Recently, as I stated in my reply, the office has been making use of the Centre for Management Organisation and Development, CMOD, of the Department of Finance to put forward a short to medium-term solution. This has led the office to use a legal publishing company here to advise on the matter, which is what is happening at present. A quotation document was issued to seven legal publishing companies and two responses were received by the October deadline. Following the evaluation of the quotations received, it was recommended that Thomson Round Hall be requested to produce the report, subject to a contract. I understand the contract has not yet been completed.

It has been established that this problem is soluble and it is a question of cost. The office had already enforced a penalty on the South African company previously, of approximately €130,000, for some other outstanding work. However, it is co-operating in this regard and will co-operate with Thompson Round Hall in the preparation of the report to find a resolution to this matter.

This morning, I asked staff in the Office of the Attorney General when they thought this process would get under way. They hope it will get underway in January, immediately after Christmas, in order to rectify the difficulty as outlined by Juta Publishing Limited and the legal reporting company which has been engaged to correct the problems.

Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)
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When does the Taoiseach expect the process to be complete?

Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)
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The process will not start until January. However, I understand that if the problem is identified, it may not take too long to sort it out.

Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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Does the Taoiseach accept the Government and technology do not appear to get on very well? There has been the electronic voting fiasco and the PPARS debacle and now it transpires the Irish Statute Book cannot be properly put on the Attorney General's website. Does the Taoiseach accept the presence of the Statute Book on the website of the principal law officer of the State serves as authentication that it is correct? Does he accept it is horrific the laws made in the Oireachtas are not properly recorded there? Will he give us some idea of what has been done so far other than issuing a disclaimer? Is it merely telling people to ignore what is on the Attorney General's website? Is that the essence of what has occurred so far?

How much did it cost to organise this website? The Taoiseach mentioned a South African company. Has he any idea of what it will cost to fix it? On the timeframe, he mentioned the possibility that work, from the point of view of finding a solution to the problem, might be under way in January. Why were steps not put in hand straight away after the problem surfaced and why do we continue using an Attorney General's website which contains all these serious errors? More importantly, will the Taoiseach give an approximate date by which all these issues will be cleared up?

Overall, does the Taoiseach not accept this is a serious matter in that laws made must be promulgated and if that is done incorrectly, apparently authenticated by the principal law officer of the State, it could lead to a dreadful situation?

Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)
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I do not wish to go back over the entire history of this project, which has been going on for the past decade. As I said, the first release of the CD-ROM format was in December 1998 in respect of Acts from 1922 to 1997. As Deputy Sargent stated, we do not use our technology as the authoritative legislative base. I do not think anybody does that, other than perhaps——

Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)
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Tasmania.

Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)
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——Tasmania.

Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)
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The Greens are much stronger there.

Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)
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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.

Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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It is buttons compared to the money wasted elsewhere.

Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)
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I do not consider it is waste. The cost of €1 million to put on CD-ROM all our legislation since the foundation of the State, from 1922 to 1997, including the chronological tables, is not great in technology terms. Unfortunately, there was an error in it which must be rectified and the project team has been working on that. It has moved on to examine many other successful aspects of the technology in that Department but an error occurred in this area which must be corrected. The team must now find the programme codes whereby this can be done. To this end, a company has been brought in to help and the contract has been prepared for this purpose.

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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Is this a single error or a series of errors? Is there any prospect of the State being sued as a result, by people who relied on the information they got from this website? Does the Taoiseach agree with me that in terms of marketing ourselves as the intelligent island, it is not great PR that we cannot manage electronic voting, the electoral register or a website like this one? We seem to have great difficulties when we bring in consultants and the answer appears to be to bring in more consultants to correct the first consultants' work. Meanwhile, the cost keeps mounting up. This seems to be a pattern going back to the computerisation of most Departments. We made calamitous cock-ups, which were revealed in successive reports by the Comptroller and Auditor General. These concerned the Department of Agriculture and Food, the Department of Social and Family Affairs and so on. It is a very expensive business.

Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)
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As regards Deputy Rabbitte's first question, during the update process of the statutory instrument project it was established that a systematic error had occurred on a selection of data contained in the Acts and statutory instruments. The error was caused by the insertion of hyper-links, or direct clickable links, to reference parts of the Acts or statutory instruments during the process of creating the CD-ROM version of the Act in 1999. That caused some of the data to be overwritten. No errors have been located in the post-1998 data. It is a fact that technology systems throughout the world, and particularly in their start-up phase, are costly but one must start somewhere. Problems regularly arise when working through such systems. I am afraid that is par for the course in technology systems and has been for the last 25 years. Thankfully, they seem to get on top of them after a period and they work well. I am afraid, however, that the problem is not unique to this country. In this instance, people were brought in from abroad in the belief that they would have great solutions that had worked elsewhere. They also made mistakes, however, although admittedly only in some areas.

Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)
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The Taoiseach said that a contract was about to be signed. I would be interested to know if there is a timetable associated with that contract or is it open-ended. Does the Taoiseach consider that once the work has been undertaken, this version will be the authentic one? He referred to Tasmania as being unique, although I am not sure whether it is. Is he saying that the Tasmanian standard of having an authentic version of the Statute Book on-line is somehow a bridge too far, a standard too high or something we will not be able to achieve? Alternatively, is he saying that is the objective of the contract on which he is about to sign off? At the end of that process, can the Taoiseach confirm that we will have an authentic, electronic Statute Book which will not have people scurrying about looking for the hard copy before they can make a decision? Ultimately, the service will be ineffective if it is not authentic. Will our standard be as high as Tasmania's or will we have to settle for something else?

Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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Could the Taoiseach give an outline of what is currently on the website? Does it contain the Irish version of the legislation or only the English version? If it does not contain the Irish version does it comply with the Official Languages Act 2003? Regarding the authenticity of what is on the website, was it presented initially as an accurate reproduction of the legislation and was it reasonable for people to accept it as a true and correct record of the laws as passed in the Oireachtas? Has the Taoiseach any practical understanding of the problems that have been created for people as a result of this incorrect information being put on the website and the errors that have arisen due to the technological failure?

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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Is the Ceann Comhairle permitting only this round of questions?

Rory O'Hanlon (Cavan-Monaghan, Ceann Comhairle)
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We shall not move on to the next round of questions.

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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Has the Taoiseach been advised that a person who relied on this information may sue the State?

Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)
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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.