Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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Question 373: To ask the Minister for Social Protection the savings that have been made in his Department through the use of open source software packages and generic consumables; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39926/10]

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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The Department operates an 'open sourcing' procurement model which aims to achieve the most economically advantageous result for each requirement/procurement. This includes consideration of open source solutions and generic consumables.

Open source software and proprietary software have different business models and it is difficult to compare them directly even where they have directly comparable functionality. The open source business model depends on service and support revenues whereas the proprietary software business model depends on a mixture of licence fees and support revenues. Neither is intrinsically better than the other – the Department's experience is that lower initial acquisition costs for open source are usually balanced by overall higher support costs, particularly where a diverse set of packages are deployed. The Department has a number of open source packages in use as well as a number of proprietary software packages.