The U.S. publisher of Encyclopedia Britannica has apologized to Ireland for providing incorrect information about the Irish Civil War in a past version of its concise edition. 

 Earlier this week Irish students complained that the information listed on their concise electronic version was incorrect.

 The encyclopedia stated that the Irish Civil war was fought between the Catholic South of Ireland and the Protestant North of Ireland. 

Publishers say they are sorry for the snafu but that they corrected the mistake years ago. 

Company spokesman, Tom Panelas, agreed that there was a mistake but the error was corrected in 2005. 

He said the only readers able to see the mistaken version are those with older version of the electronic concise edition. 

The Chicago-based publisher provided online access of the encyclopedia to Ireland's 4,000 schools.

However, said Panelas, the error edition was never supplied to them.