Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context

Question 290: To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources 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. [2234/10]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context

My Department manages a number of websites that are focused on delivering information and mapping services to the wide range of stakeholders that have an interest in the Communications, Energy, and Natural Resources areas for which my Department is responsible. As the unique visitor numbers illustrate, the websites vary between those of general interest, and specialised websites which supply information and services of a technical nature to specialised stakeholder groups.

The cost of the websites cannot be easily broken out to individual costs, as most of them are hosted on the same hardware and share features such as mapping services across all the websites. The total cost of hosting and software maintenance for websites hosted in the Local Government Computer Services Board (LGCSB) was €79,914, and in HEAnet it was €15,600. The numbers of unique visits to the websites are detailed in the following table.