Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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1307. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the external company undertaking an audit of his departmental website; the cost of the audit; the timeframe for its completion; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45863/17]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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I, and my Department, are committed to providing information and services which are fully accessible to all our customers.

My Department’s website,www.housing.gov.ie,was redesigned and relaunched on 22 February 2016. As part of the redesign and re-engineering process, a strong emphasis was placed on the key areas of usability and accessibility. In line with best practice, Universal Design principles were applied across the project and our aim is to ensure consistent compliance with international standard Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. The website was tested by a staff member who uses assistive technology and a number of issues were identified. These issues were remediated immediately. The site continues to be monitored on an ongoing basis.

It was my Department’s intention to arrange for an independent accessibility assessment of our website within the first year of its relaunch. However, this was not possible due to competing priorities including the changes to my Department’s functions in the interim, necessitating the extraction of several suites of information from the website. It is intended that the accessibility audit will be undertaken in 2018.