The sight of Ministers arriving at Government Buildings with bulging briefcases and mounds of files will soon be a thing of the past, following the launch of the eCabinet initiative.
Soon Ministers will be reading documentation from a discreet computer screen on a newly-designed Cabinet table.
The Government Chief Whip, Ms Mary Hanafin, said yesterday the initiative would make the Coalition a world leader in that area. "eCabinet heralds the end of an era, which has operated since the foundation of the State, of manually circulating Cabinet documentation. Speed, efficiency and real-time access to information will be just some of the benefits."
The system will be secure from computer hackers, and, unlike in the case of electronic voting, there will be a paper trail.
At a briefing in Government Buildings yesterday, Ms Hanafin said the Department of the Taoiseach team and the company, In.vision, were to be congratulated "on meeting the major challenges of designing and building a system" specifically for Cabinet.
And the new Cabinet table has also been designed to ensure the Taoiseach has a better view of all Ministers, an important consideration given the autumn reshuffle.