The much-hyped millennium bug was one of the main reasons Government Departments got rid of almost 2,200 computers last year. The main beneficiaries from the Y2K computer purge were civil servants and charities.
The Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaelteacht either sold or gave 237 computers to charities such as the Chernobyl Children's Fund.
The largest clear-out was by the Department of Foreign Affairs, where diplomats had no further use for 652 computers. Staff at Foreign Affairs bought 230 of the computers (35 per cent), 75 (12 per cent) were given to voluntary groups, and 347 (53 per cent) were destroyed.
Many Departments used the period up to the new year to upgrade their computer systems, replacing some machines that were between five and 10 years old.
In most cases these computers would have been of little use to anyone. The 102 computers disposed of by the Department of Agriculture were described as being "totally obsolete or damaged beyond repair".
The Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs has a policy of reusing older personal computers as computer terminals.
This means no computers have been disposed of in that Department over the last five years.
Staying true to its reputation for secrecy, the Department of Justice cited security reasons in explaining its disposal policy. The 400 computers it disposed of last year had their hard disk drives removed and destroyed. This action ruled out passing on the machines to third-party organisations such as schools as the cost to the receiving organisation of adding new disks would have outweighed any benefit to them.
The 40 personal computers disposed of by the Taoiseach's Department had "zero book value and were disposed of to staff at a nominal cost". However, charitable and educational bodies benefited from the disposal of another 40 computers last month.
The Department of Tourism, Sport and Recreation was the only Government Department that did not get rid of any computers last year.
Along with ensuring computers were Y2K compliant, the other reason for the disposal policy was age and outdatedness.