Vol. 510 No. 1
138 Mrs. Owen asked the Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation the current state of preparedness of his Department and any agencies attached to his Department with regard to year 2000; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21906/99]
Bord Fáilte, CERT and ADM Limited, are participants on my Department's year 2000 Monitoring Committee, which was for med late last year to monitor and discuss achievement of year 2000 compliance.
My Department has completed work and reported year 2000 compliance to the Interdepartmental Year 2000 Monitoring Committee, which reports every two months to Government. It has also formulated contingency and staff cover plans for the millennium changeover period, as required by Government.
With regard to the State agencies under the aegis of my Department, ADM Limited, has completed work and declared itself year 2000 compliant. Bord Fáilte has reported that all its business critical systems are year 2000 compliant with just a few remaining minor pieces of hardware and software to be upgraded. The Department has been assured that this upgrading will be finalised within a further week. Similarly, CERT has reported that further upgrading of certain of its systems remains to be completed, but has assured the Department that compliance will be achieved before the end of November.
The Irish Sports Council, which was formally established in July of this year, has yet to develop a computerised network within its office. It is, however, taking care to ensure that any IT or office equipment being procured is fully compliant.
139 Mrs. Owen asked the Minister for Education and Science the current state of preparedness of his Department and any agencies attached to his Department with regard to year 2000; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21907/99]
My Department has successfully completed a major programme of work designed to ensure that all its existing IT systems and all of the hardware and software components of its IT infrastructure will continue to work through the changeover to the next millennium. A contingency plan to deal with unanticipated problems has also been developed and is currently being reviewed.
My Department has been reporting on a regular basis to Government on the progress towards year 2000 compliance of bodies under its aegis. I met yesterday with those bodies, which have yet to complete their work programmes and I have sought assurances from them that outstanding work will be completed by the end of November. I will be updating the Government on the matter again next week.
