Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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242. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the domain names registered to or owned by his Department or through a third party company. [48944/17]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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My Department operates more than 80 websites in total, comprising those that relate to our activities here in Ireland as well as those of Ireland’s diplomatic missions abroad.

From January 2017 to date, these websites have together received in excess of 37 million page views. Users include Irish citizens seeking to access services such as Passport Tracking, Travel Advice and Online Passport Renewals, as well as other international users seeking information about various Ireland-related matters.

Against this background, and from the checking that proved possible to conduct in the time available, I can confirm that my Department currently holds ownership rights to the web domain names listed as follows.

Our primary domain name structure is dfa.ie. The need arises for us to retain ownership of the other domain names as listed below since these were previously used by the Department and Ireland’s diplomatic missions abroad prior to the creation of the centralized dfa.ie structure. While a small proportion of the other domain names in question continue to be in active use, the majority re-direct users to dfa.ie as appropriate.

We are also retaining ownership of most of these other domain names over the longer term so as to help prevent any confusion arising for users of our websites at home or abroad and to guard on an ongoing basis against the danger of so-called ‘cyber-squatting’ – that is, acquiring of domain names by third parties for unauthorized commercial or other negative purposes.

My Department will keep our policy in this area under ongoing review.

List of Registered Domains: