Vol. 510 No. 1
93 Mrs. Owen asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development 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. [21899/99]
In consultation with the centre for management and organisation development of the Department of Finance, my Department completed a year 2000 preliminary impact assessment report in 1997. In August 1997 a year 2000 project board was set up, chaired by an assistant secretary, to oversee the work on year 2000 compliance. As part of the preliminary impact assessment, a number of departmental systems were identified as being non-compliant. Resulting from this, a year 2000 compliance plan was drafted in October 1997. The year 2000 project board meets on a monthly basis to review and monitor progress and reports regularly to the Department's management committee and IT steering committee. In addition, every two months a status report is forwarded to the Interdepartmental Year 2000 Monitoring Committee.
Remedial work was carried out on all non-compliant systems in the Department. All business critical systems were year 2000 compliant by the Government deadline of end July 1999. Full compliance was achieved on all other marginal systems by the end of September 1999.
With regard to State bodies, the position is that on foot of a Government decision, a monitoring committee, chaired at assistant secretary level, was established in my Department in June 1998 to oversee year 2000 compliance in the relevant State agencies. All of the agencies have been reporting year 2000 progress every two months and all are now fully compliant.
