Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

If I may make one other point, there may be a good deal of validity in what the Minister says about electronic researching but these things are used for many purposes, including family purposes. We do not have a fully electronic society. There is a good deal of validity in what the Minister said about the register but it is a mistake to think that 60 year old Australians or 70 year old Americans are completely computer literate.

I would emphasise that this is a very important economic branch. In the late 1980s, Charles Haughey established a sort of family plans office to encourage this type of activity as an aid to tourism. It is a bit like all airlines deciding that one can only book over the Internet. We are still some considerable distance from that. Perhaps some tolerance should be allowed for the fact that we are not a totally electronic society in terms of these type of paper records instantly flying from one computer to another.