My Department is making good progress on the year 2000 issue. All critical systems will be compliant by early 1999 and two non-critical systems will be made compliant before the middle of 1999.
My Department requested bodies under its aegis to address their year 2000 issues as a matter of urgency. For some offices, full compliancy has already been achieved, others will have achieved compliancy by mid 1999.
There is no specific year 2000 fund included in the Department's 1998 Estimates. Expenditure has been met from existing allocations for IT and office systems. Many elements of year 2000 compliancy have been achieved as part of the normal ongoing IT replacement programme. No additional staff have been assigned for year 2000 purposes. Consultants have been engaged where the required expertise was not available in-house.
There is a considerable effort being made within my Department to resolve this issue and the situation will continue to be closely monitored both by my Department and the year 2000 committee.