The Internet Viruses Council has just issued a warning which should be taken very seriously concerning viruses which may strike during the summer months - in Ireland in particular. This group of nasty viruses are referred to as "GAA computer Viruses" and are named and described as follows:

• The Meath Virus: Throws you out of Windows.
• The Clare Virus: Memory forgets everything before 1995.
• The Tribesman Virus : Appears and disappears on one Sunday in August.
• The Kerry Virus: Five years of hard work wiped out by undetected Offaly mail.
• The Waterford Virus: Not due to strike again for another 40 years.
• The Colin Lynch Virus: Boots up some Waterford computers and carries on as if nothing happened.
• The Ger Loughnane Virus 1: Virtually impossible to rid your PC of this one.
• The Mayo Virus Family: Always billed as harmful, but really are nothing to worry about.
• The Mick O'Dwyer Virus: Attempts to install lots of foreign programs to replace existing slow-running applications.
• The Limerick Hurling Virus: Causes problems for 65 minutes then disappears never to be seen again.
• The Babs Keating Virus: Enters a PC, attempts to delete all existing programs and reformat hard drive; when detected and removed it generates weekly log files citing errors in bits 8 to 15.
• The John Maughan Virus: System crashes in September.
• The John Leahy Virus: A particularly lethal virus. Users are advised to tie down the monitor as a precaution before approaching.
• The David Forde Virus: Hasn't been seen since the "Michael Duignan Virus Killer" was invented.
• The Michael Donnellan Virus: Attacks operating system and timekeeper and then deletes all records of this ever occurring.
• The Offaly Virus: Often looked on as a benign irritation but strikes your OS as you are about to shut down. Often results in the firing of the General Manager of your PC manufacturer.
• Ger Loughnane Virus 2: A continuous whining sound emitted from speakers, keeps generating data corruption messages, PC blows up but it won't accept any blame.
• The Martin Lynch Virus: Computer pretends to go down, but then boots back up and is OK.
• The Kieran McDonald Virus: The lights on you PC are all on but nothing works.