Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)
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Question 229: To ask the Taoiseach if he will arrange for the Attorney General's website to be updated to include all 2004 and 2005 Acts and, in particular, statutory instruments. [5812/06]

Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)
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Since the mid-1990s, the Office of the Attorney General has prepared, and updated on an ongoing basis, an electronic Irish Statute Book, which includes the full text of all Acts, statutory instruments and chronological tables published since 1922 on its website. The office has also published the Statute Book in CD-ROM format. The website gives the documentation up to the end of 2003 and the office is making arrangements to have this brought up to June 2005 in respect of Acts and statutory instruments and to the end of 2004 in respect of chronological tables. A new CD-ROM is also being prepared and it and the updated material on the website should be available by mid-March 2006.

At the office's suggestion, a group was established last year to look at the issue of producing statutory instruments in a common electronic format as, in the past, delay has been experienced in collating statutory instruments prepared by Government Departments and other agencies. Should statutory instruments be produced in such a format, it would allow the website to be updated with new material sooner than can be done at present. The office is examining its future strategy in respect of the Statute Book. In respect of pre-1922 legislation, the office is preparing an electronic database which will list the Acts of a public and general nature which remain in force. It is hoped to make this database accessible to the public.