Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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Question 219: To ask the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the number of websites his Department provides; the annual cost of maintaining each site; the number of unique visits each site received for 2009, or for a part of 2009; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2243/10]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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My Department provides centralised support for 23 websites developed under its IT Shared Service model. Figures recorded in 2009 indicate that there were over one quarter of a million unique visits to my Department's main site (www.justice.ie) and over a half a million unique visits to the website of the Irish Naturalisation & Immigration Service (www.inis.gov.ie). Individual visits are not recorded for all sites.

Hosting and related charges for these sites in 2009 came to €38,408. Other costs, such as staff time spent maintaining the site content which forms part of the day to day work of the Department, are not separately accounted for.

Websites are an essential communications tool for any modern organisation in providing essential customer services. As part of the Shared Service model, websites are developed and maintained based on reusable templates. This approach has led to a reduction in the cost and effort of setting up and supporting websites.