As the Deputy will be aware, the gov.ie website is the key source of information on government and public services, with approximately 75 million page views in 2024. It was also a critical information resource during covid-19.
In April 2025 the Gov.ie platform underwent a major system upgrade, carried out by OGCIO. Following this upgrade some links were unintentionally broken. Any broken links were replaced with placeholder text, “Item has been unpublished or removed”.
At that time, my Department worked with OGCIO to review our content on the site and resolve any broken links. The resolution of the issue is almost complete. OGCIO have informed us that a post-migration audit revealed that less than 1% of all pages were affected by broken links.
In reference to the Irish Times article of 17th June “Official documents are quietly disappearing from departmental websites. Why?”, we can confirm that the publication was not removed or unpublished from the site. The Action Plan on Food Poverty and the associated research report referenced in this article have been available on the gov.ie website since publication and can be found at the Social Inclusion Division page. The broken link referenced in this article was found on a related Press Release page, published on 11 July 2024 - Minister of State Joe O’Brien publishes the Food Poverty Action Plan.
We have been in touch with the journalist to thank them for highlighting this matter, and to let them know that we took immediate steps to re-establish the broken link on this page.
Every effort is made by my Department to keep gov.ie content up to date, accurate and accessible. We are committed to the open publication of government information and I can assure the Deputy that no systematic removal of links or documents has taken place. The issue here was a technical one which we have taken steps to resolve. If a member of the public requires access to a particular document that is affected by this issue, they can contact my Department directly.
