Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 5 July 2023
91. Deputy Catherine Murphy asked the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the number of instances in which his Department used unlicensed software and/or lapsed licenced software in the past ten years to date; the associated expenditure on same to remedy the situation; and the software that was being used. [33153/23]
View answerMy Department endeavours to comply with all its software licensing obligations and does not intentionally use unlicensed software. From time to time, changes to staff numbers or technical changes to existing ICT systems has resulted in discrepancies being identified following software audits. Details of those discrepancies are:
A Microsoft audit in 2016 identified discrepancies between the Department's 'Total License Entitlement' and the 'Licenses Deployed'. New licenses and subscriptions were purchased at a total cost of €218,466 to resolve the discrepancies. A similar audit in 2022 resulted in new licenses and subscriptions being purchased at a cost of €37,972. No fines, penalties or arrears were paid in either case.
Arising from an audit of Oracle software license compliance in 2013, the Department was found to have been under licensed for a small number of users for an individual module. There were no penalties for this issue, but the Department was required to update its license subscription arrangements. The actual cost of this is not completely clear, as it appears that the matter was addressed as part of the Department's annual Oracle license renewal. However, based on current costs for these licenses, it is expected that the cost to the Department at the time would have been less than €2,000.
