CONCERNS that people from Israel were being blocked from accessing a Welsh Government website have been resolved.

Darren Millar, MS for Clwyd West, had called on the Welsh Governement to "urgently explain" why people in Israel were blocked from accessing the Cadw website, the Welsh Government’s historic environment service which promotes heritage sites such as castles and other visitor attractions.

Speaking in a meeting of the Welsh Parliament, he said: "I've been contacted by a member of the Welsh Jewish community with regard to access to the Cadw website. It appears that people who are attempting to access the website from Israel appear to be blocked from doing so.

“Now, using a virtual private network, I tried to take a look at this myself, and it seemed to me that the Cadw website was perfectly accessible from France, the United States, Spain and many other countries, yet not from an Israeli internet provider address.

"It’s my understanding that this has been raised with Cadw as far back as September but, as of yet, no action has been taken to address the problem.

“I'd be very grateful if we could have the Minister responsible for Cadw to take an urgent look at this to try and address it, and provide an explanation to the Senedd as to the reason for this issue.”

A spokesperson from Cadw told the Journal and Pioneer that, following an investigation, it has been identified that people trying to access the Cadw website from Israel were unable to do so due to a firewall configuration on the server which hosts the Cadw website.

"This firewall configuration has now been updated and the website is now fully accessible to all users within the country," they added.