When one of my colleagues in the Department of Education and Science sent me an e-mail, saying "I have just looked at your website (OMG)", I was extremely embarrassed. OMG stands for Oh My God and is shorthand for "what an out-of-date website".

We were one of the first voluntary organisations in Ireland to put up a website. That was in 1997 and, though it was quite basic, we were very excited about it. So excited, in fact, that we stood back and admired it. We updated it occasionally, but not often enough.

There may be no such thing as bad publicity, but there is such as thing as a bad website and we had one, simply because it was out of date. In fairness, we were taking it apart and putting it together in a new format. It has now been completely overhauled, all our staff have been trained in updating it, and there is a sense of staff ownership. I was first introduced to the Web in 1996, and was a little sceptical. Now, I use e-mail all the time, both at home and at work as well as using the web as a resource.