A glitch in 1,800 Irish names in the new telephone directory for the Dublin area has led to a supplement being issued to correct them.
The fault appeared in names with a fada. In the printing process the fada seemed to either appear without the letter underneath it or a corrupt character was printed.
Golden Pages, which publishes the directory on behalf of Eircom, said that 1,800 Irish names were affected in the 2006 directory in the Dublin residential listings.
Last night Golden Pages said that due to a technical fault that occurred after the proofing stage and during the printing process, a small percentage of listings had been affected.
It said that the Irish-language names had been affected "by an error which caused a corrupt character to appear in the place of a fada".
It stated: "Golden Pages, which prints the book on behalf of Eircom, sincerely regrets any inconvenience caused by this error."
A supplement containing all of the corrected listings is being distributed, according to a spokeswoman for Golden Pages.
The supplement would be included in all remaining deliveries of the 01 phone book.
For those who had already received their book, the supplement would be distributed to them separately in the next few weeks.
"Golden Pages wishes to assure customers that immediate steps have been taken in the production process to prevent an error of this type recurring," she said.
Irish-language listings in all other areas of the country were unaffected by the technical error. There are 260,000 listings altogether, and 610,000 copies of the telephone directory are being published.
Sinn Féin Irish language spokesman Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD yesterday expressed his disappointment at what he described as the failure of the new directory to correctly recognise the Irish language.
"All Irish words and names that have a letter with a fada on them appear without the letter and just the fada appears instead," he said.
Mr Ó Snodaigh said it was a shame that nobody had taken the time to properly proof the directory before it went to the printers.