Labyrinth to develop referendum site

Labyrinth has been chosen to develop and maintain the referendum returning officer's website for the forthcoming abortion referendum results.

Located at www.referendum.ie, the site provides information on the upcoming referendum and information on previous referenda.

On polling day, a new section of the site will go live to monitor voting results as they are counted.

The site will provide the general public with real-time access to both national and local results as they become available from individual count centres nationwide.

Labyrinth created the initial referendum site for last year's three referenda on the Treaty of Nice, Prohibition of the death penalty and International Criminal Court.

This site, created in 26 days, attracted more than 400,000 hits within its first six hours of going live.

Labyrinth will re-launch the voting section of the site on referendum day and expect a further increase in visitor numbers to the site for this year's referendum.

The site provides the referendum returning officer with the ability to consolidate and present referendum results instantly whilst also providing up-to-the-minute information to news organisations through live XML information feed which link the site to all major national news organisations.

Labyrinth, founded in 1996, is 51% owned by Esat, a subsidiary of British Telecom.