Question:
197 Dr. Upton asked the Minister for Arts, Heritage Gaeltacht and the Islands the number of personal computers discarded or disposed of by her Department in 1999 or the latest period for which figures are available. [5444/00]
Written Answers. - Personal Computers.
During 1999 my Department discarded or disposed of 237 personal computers. All these computers were replaced as part of the desktop standardisation project with Y2k implications. Most of these were sold or given to charitable organisations such as the Chernobyl Children's Fund.
Question:
198 Dr. Upton asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the number of personal computers discarded or disposed of by his Department in 1999 or the latest period for which figures are available. [5445/00]
My Department discarded a total of 400 personal computers in the year 1999. In addition to the normal replacement cycle an upgrade of operating system and application software was carried out to ensure Year 2000 compliance. Many of the units disposed of were six to ten years old.
It is the policy of my Department that, for security reasons, any computers disposed of have their hard disk drives removed and destroyed before disposal. This rules out passing them on to third party organisations such as schools as the cost to the receiving organisation of adding new disks would have outweighed the benefit to them.