HOSKYNS Ireland has launched its year 2000 service to Irish corporates. The service which aims to solve turn of the century computer problems' has already beep used by the company's US arm.

The service automates both the locating of dates and the changing of codes, allowing companies to plan and implement solutions.

The service follows a recent Hoskyns report which reveals - complacency among Irish corporates about the scale of changes needed.

The survey of 120 banks, insurance companies and other finance organisations found that 62 per cent of respondents had only started their year 2000 projects in the past year. Almost 40 per cent were still in the process of assessing the scale of the problem.

Hoskyns estimates that the typical company, with an average of 20,000 to 30,000 programmes manually testing and implementing each programme, would take 60,000 days.