Address by Mr. Noel Treacy, T.D., Minister for Science, Technology and Commerce on the Year 2000 Millennium Roadshow of Solution 6, the Institute of Chartered Accountants, and the Institute of Taxation at Jury's Hotel on Monday, 14th September, 1998, at 2.00 pm

The problem variously referred to as the Millennium Bug, or Millennium Timebomb, is now well and truly on the business agenda and it is encouraging that as a consequence of the efforts of the Government and other bodies and indeed the increasing level of media coverage, business interests seems to have at last, absorbed the message that this serious problem is looming fast. Despite this growing level of awareness it is the uncertainty of what exactly will be affected and how, that has given rise to such concern on this complex subject.

As far as the Government is concerned, our involvement in this problem is twofold. Firstly, we have been organising a campaign to make business aware of the problem and secondly, we have a responsibility to put the Government's own house in order so that the huge range of services provided by the State will be unaffected into the new Millennium.

The critical aspect is awareness. It was apparent that many businesses around the country were unaware of the issues involved. To tackle this deficit I established a Year 2000 Campaign Committee earlier this year. This brought together the expertise of a wide range of representatives in the private sector. The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland is one of those organisations represented and I am grateful for the excellent contribution of your nominee, Mr. Robert Menzies, to the success of our Committee. The National Committee were responsible for the production of a detailed brochure on this subject and 100,000 of these brochures were distributed around the country to business interests. This document set out details of the problem and it has attempted to demystify the issue and set out the steps which business should follow to identify the problems in their own enterprises. It has been our experience that when the initial foreboding of what is considered a very technical subject is overcome and people are prepared to get to grips with the issue, great progress can be made.

To bring the message to as wide an audience as possible, we organised a series of Conference roadshows at regional centres. These involved presentations by a variety of expert speakers and several local business interests were involved at each location. These sessions were held in Dundalk, Athlone, Sligo Cork, Waterford, Galway and Limerick and helped to spread the message to provincial areas that this issue would affect all businesses around the country.

The culmination of these events was the National Conference held in UCD last week, which was addressed by An Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. The media coverage of that event has further helped to spread the awareness message.

I would like to emphasise that the Government cannot solve this problem for business. Our role has been to create awareness of the issue and alert the business community about the problem.

Individual enterprises must get to work to identify the issues as they affect them and devise solutions. This is primarily a management issue, just like other management issues which arise all the time in the running of business. It is a matter for each individual business, and other users of computer systems, to assess the full implications of the Year 2000 on their particular systems and to identify the necessary solution.

While many large organisations have major programmes underway to address the millennium date problem, our Government is seriously concerned that the small to medium enterprise sector, is not responding as well, or as quickly, as it should.

This is borne out by the results of a survey of Irish businesses undertaken by the Irish Computer Society and the Chambers of Commerce in Ireland. The results of this survey were presented at last week's Conference. This found that 90% of businesses understood the business issues regarding the Year 2000 problem and that over 70% have commenced action in their own businesses. These are very encouraging findings and give us satisfaction that our awareness campaign has worked to a very large measure. However, other findings of the survey are less cheerful. Many businesses had not completed their inventory of Software and Embedded Systems. Likewise, many businesses had not assessed possible damage to their businesses from other enterprises in their supply chain. Smaller businesses, particularly retailers, still have a lot of work to do.

As regards Central Government, this problem is being tackled in several ways to ensure that the huge range of services which the Government provide, will be maintained without interruption.

All Departments prepared Year 2000 plans which identified the extent of problems and how systems needed to be changed, altered or upgraded to ensure that their activities can run smoothly into the next Millennium.

The Government established an Interdepartmental Year 2000 Committee to oversee the changes necessary and this Committee has been hard at work to ensure that all Departments are taking the correct remedial action. The early findings of that Committee identified problems similar to the issues faced by the Private Sector, namely, slipping timetables, losses of crucial IT staff, over-reliance on external consultancies and problems in the areas of office equipment. The issue of IT staff losses has been identified as a major issue and with the increasing level of demand for IT specialists as we near the crucial date, the problem will be exacerbated.

A system of regular reporting and updating by individual Departments is in place, so that progress can be reviewed and appropriate action taken. While inventories, risk assessments, planning and development of work programmes have all been completed and remedial work is well underway within the Civil Service, a significant amount of work still remains to be done, to achieve Year 2000 compliance. In some cases, development work on new IT projects has been deferred so that scarce staff resources can be deployed on addressing the more urgent Millennium problem.

Some gloomy predictions have been made and, indeed, some frightening vistas have been forecast. In the real world, businesses need to approach this difficulty as they would any other management challenge. The key factor in this challenge is that the deadline is so imminent and cannot be postponed.

The threat which this problem poses for business is a real one, which, if ignored any longer, by any business, could have very serious implications for the ability of companies to continue to operate. Every organisation in the country could potentially be affected, from large financial companies with mainframe systems, to SMEs with PC-based systems and even companies with no computer systems at all.

I would like you to consider this in a wider framework. As you all know, the economy is performing remarkably well at present. This country needs this progress to be maintained without interruption. We are now in the healthy position of steadily reducing unemployment; of creating very significant numbers of new jobs annually and of having the Government finances in a very healthy state.

This healthy position must be maintained. We live in a fast changing business environment with global challenges ever-present. We should not be lulled into any false sense of security on the issue of maintaining our competitiveness. Our businesses must maintain their flexibility and capacity to do business and seek out opportunities at all times. It would be a serious setback if this Year 2000 problem was to put any brake on progress or hinder our business community from achieving their full potential in generating economic growth and creating sustainable employment. With capital and investment so mobile, we can never rest from the overriding issue of ensuring that we retain our competitiveness, which has been such a crucial factor in our economic well-being.

I know that the accountancy profession has been taking this issue very seriously and I would like to close by wishing you every success with your conference.