Legal eagles and public information junkies are in for a real treat this Christmas following the publication of the Acts of the Oireachtas on CD-Rom.

Each Act appears in full text format and a powerful search engine allows keyword searches of the entire database. The launch of the CDRom, which retails at £20, coincides with the publication of its contents on the Attorney General's website (www.irlgov.ie/ag). The Attorney General's office estimates the cost of purchasing the same information in hard copy version would be about £2,000.