State reports used Wikipedia as source
A Fine Gael senator has called on the Government to check their facts after it emerged that a number of departments have been using information from a notoriously unreliable website.
Two official reports from the departments of the environment and agriculture have sourced material from Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.
Wikipedia is a popular website which allows any member of the public to log on and change the information on any page. It is widely regarded as being, at times, unreliable, known to sometimes contain false statistics and has been the target of hoaxers.
This brings the number of departments known to have used the site to three, following the recent admission from the Department of Justice that a 2008 report on gambling referenced information from the site.
A December 2008 report into the availability of IT in rural areas compiled by the Department of Agriculture cites a Wikipedia page as a source.
A spokeswoman from the department said that the report was "well referenced and sourced" and that the citing of Wikipedia was to explain the term to the "lay reader".
A Department of the Environment "conservation study" on Monasterboice, Co Louth, from August 2009, was also discovered to be using information from Wikipedia.
According to a spokesman the report was commissioned by the department and was "produced by leading experts in the field".
He said that the link to Wikipedia only refers to images used in the report.
FG Senator Paschal Donohoe said the trend was "very worrying" and criticised the departments for referencing a website with such a track record of errors. "This is very worrying," he said.
"As much as I like to see Government using the internet, they really need to double-check where it is coming from."
- Stephen Dunne
Irish Independent
