Errors in state’s online statute book: ThePost.ie


TCH Archives > Sunday Business Post > 2006/09/10 > Errors in state’s online statute book

Errors in state’s online statute book
Sunday, September 10, 2006 - By Kieron Wood
A €1 million project to make all Irish legislation available online has foundered after major errors were discovered.

A South African company, Juta Ltd, was paid IR£759,238 (€964,033) to create an electronic version of the Irish statute book, but lawyers have discovered that some legislation has been overwritten.

The Attorney General’s office has now published a notice saying that it ‘‘regrets to advise users of the Irish statute book that a specific error has been identified which occurs where some hyperlinks have overwritten text. Where appropriate, [users] should check the official Stationery Office version of the act or statutory instrument concerned.”

A notice on the AG’s website at www.irishstatutebook.ie says: ‘‘The Office of the Attorney General would like to apologise for any inconvenience, and confirms that it is currently working towards resolving the problem. The website will be corrected as soon as the problem has been resolved.”

A spokesman for the Attorney General’s office told The Sunday Business Post: ‘‘The electronic version of the Irish statute book was an ambitious and difficult project. It contains thousands of statutes, tens of thousands of statutory instruments and chronological tables of amendments, and has complex technical features, such as internal hyperlinking and a search facility.

‘‘The hyperlinking error affects the electronic version of certain legislation enacted between 1922-1998. The effect of the error was to overwrite certain parts of the text of some statutes and statutory instruments.

“The error does not affect the great bulk of the text or post-1998 legislation. All known external organisations that may have used the electronic Irish statute book were notified.

‘‘The office of the Attorney General is in discussions with the original contractors with a view to identifying the extent of the problem and is examining options to rectify the error.”

Juta has not carried out any work for the Attorney General since 1998. In 2001, new contractors, Propylon Ltd, were retained to update the website.

Juta’s electronic publishing manager, Wendy Moulang, said: ‘‘The problem has been solved from our perspective.

“We sent everything through to the AG’s office two weeks ago.”

But lawyers say the error means that the website is now effectively useless.

Dr Brian Hunt, head of public affairs at Mason Hayes & Curran solicitors, said: ‘‘No matter how up-to-date the Irish Statute Book website is, as long as the existing problems remain, the site will always be unreliable.

‘‘Rather than continuing to update what is an already inaccurate database, the Office of the Attorney General should instead concentrate on identifying all of the errors and then invest all of its energy into making sure that the existing data is accurate.”