Sir, - While President Clinton has more on his mind just now than the Year 2000 technology problem, it certainly preoccupies his vice-president, Al Gore, because the next presidential election will take place in 2000 after we cross that fateful deadline for all of our computers and embedded chips.
It may surprise many politicians here that some of Vice-President Gore's political opponents are determined to make him accountable for any catastrophes that occur because of failures to fix computers and embedded systems in time, in particular because he had made a virtue of promoting technology and the Internet and cannot plead ignorance of the issues involved. Our public debate on the Year 2000 problem, on the other hand, is so underdeveloped that it is not possible for our politicians to even have a row about it!
During the making of the documentary The Millennium Timebomb about this problem, I was quite shocked by the reticence of many people to go public about this issue for legal reasons. I witnessed this personally in the UK and the Netherlands as well as Ireland, the three countries in which we made the programme, but it applies equally around the world. Nonetheless, both the Dutch and our nearest neighbours are spending a lot more resources on the problem than we are, and are considerably more open about it.
To mobilise people to tackle any widespread national problem there must be openness and transparency, with the sharing of solutions and information between companies and across all sectors of our economy. The frightening thing is that many companies are constrained by their lawyers from saying anything because they fear they could be sued after January 1st, 2000 and that comments they make now will be used in evidence against them!
We must end the culture of silence that has grown up about the Year 2000 problem in Ireland. And one very simple initiative, if backed by legislation, could make a radical difference: a public pledge, committing the signatory to deal urgently with the Year 2000 problem in an open and comprehensive way; to share information with companies in its own business, even competitors; to mobilise everyone in its supply chain and to actively promote compliance at all levels; and to guarantee that it will not supply any non-year-2000 compliant products and services.
In return for taking this step, the signatory should be granted legal immunity from civil action arising out of Year 2000-related failures after January 1st, 2000.
Every public and private institution, business, hospital, trade union, insurance company, etc. should be entitled to sign the pledge.
This must be treated as a major disaster prevention exercise. It is that serious. But do not take my word for it. Multinational chief executives are not noted for their radicalism. And Irishman Niall Fitzgerald, the CEO of Unilever, surely cannot be categorised as a crackpot with a vested interest in promoting doom and gloom. In an interview recently he said the risk of serious breakdown in public services could not be discounted if we fail to successfully address the Year 2000 problem. - Yours, etc.,
Ronan Tynan,
Esperanza Productions,
Trintonville Road,
Dublin 4.