Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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336. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the top ten websites visited by officials and political staff annually in each of the years 2017 to 2019 and to date in 2020 via hardware provided to them by his Department; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4027/20]

Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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Staff access to websites is subject to the Department's ICT Acceptable Use Policy and unsafe and inappropriate sites are blocked from access on the Department network. Restrictions are also in place with regard to access to certain categories of sites (e.g. sports, shopping) during working hours.

The data requested by the Deputy is shown in the table below and constitutes links accessed through the Department’s ICT Shared Service for the relevant period.

It should be noted that the vast majority of links accessed do not arise from direct or intentional visits by web users, but are rather indirectly accessed through the display of advertising on other websites, as can be seen in the list below. The monitoring system in place is primarily designed to protect against cases of unsafe or inappropriate access and does not provide a breakdown of direct vs. indirect access.