A COMPUTER project in the Central Statistics Office (CSO), which cost almost €9m, has been beset by technical difficulties after being launched this summer.

The massive data management system for the CSO had taken more than six years to put in place.

However, staff have complained the programme does not do what it is supposed to and will require further significant upgrades.

The project for processing statistical surveys began in 2003 when the Central Statistics Office placed a tender and carried out an evaluation process.

The CSO said the winning bidder had been well ahead of others in terms of costs and represented the "best value for money at the time".

A spokesman for the CSO said that the project had finished in May of this year when the system got up and running.

He said: "It is not delivering 100% of what we set out for but it is a solid package. We replaced hardware that was seriously obsolete and it wouldn't be fair to say that there were an awful lot of problems.

"We are working internally on maintaining it and there are ongoing improvements. In maintaining an IT system, we will always try and find out what is more efficient… It doesn't deliver everything we would have hoped to get out of it but we are happy that we have a good system for collection and processing of statistics.

"The problems are mainly in relation to user screens and how employees in the Central Statistics Office interact with the system. We are trying to make it easier to use from that point of view.

"However, in terms of underlying technology, it is a very solid system. We have rolled out some improvements in the last couple of weeks and we will be rolling out others. From an employee point of view, it will become better to use."

Sources at the CSO told the Sunday Tribune that the new programme had been "a disaster" since being launched. One said: "It does not do what we were promised it would do. There are a lot of problems with it and it is very difficult to work with.

"Different sections of the Central Statistics Office require completely different things but this project is very general and does not really suit anybody."

Some staff have compared the project to the notoriously ill-fated PPars project at the Health Service Executive, which was eventually abandoned.