IN ASSOCIATION WITH

 About Us 

Ireland playing catch up with online nations
25-05-2006
by Charlie Taylor

Ireland is still in the slow lane when it comes to truly embracing the internet, a report claims.

According to the new 'State of the Net' quarterly bulletin on online activity in Ireland, the country lags far behind other nations for internet usage.

The report, which has been compiled by AMAS together with the Irish Internet Association, was launched at the IIA's annual congress on Thursday. The publication collates internet usage statistics in Ireland and it is aimed at businesses, researchers, the media and individual internet users.

Among the key online trends outlined in the study is Ireland's lowly position in terms of broadband adoption. The report includes figures from OECD which show that Irish broadband take-up is in the bottom quarter across 30 countries. According to the OECD's league table, Ireland's score of 6.7 per 100 inhabitants compares with an OECD average of 11.7 and an EU average of 11.8.

"We would argue that connectivity is the single biggest impediment to greater online use and a source of concern in terms of Ireland's competitiveness," said Aileen O'Toole, managing director of AMAS in the report.

This sentiment is reinforced by other statistics in the bulletin which show that despite a fall in the price of PCs, Irish citizens are still reluctant to use the internet.

According to figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO), just 45.1 percent of households had internet connections by the end of 2005, up from 38.2 percent in 2004. Moreover, there is evidence of a digital divide emerging in the country with the 47.3 percent of households in the southern and eastern parts of the Ireland being online, compared to 38.8 percent of households in the border, midland and western areas.

In addition, the latest pan-European study from CSO shows that only 14 percent of Irish people had bought something online in the previous three months compared with 36 percent each for the UK and Sweden.

Not surprisingly, most Irish internet users that do purchase products and services online tend to opt for the usual commodities such as travel and accommodation, music and film and tickets.

eGovernment activity in Ireland is also behind that of other countries. Figures from both Eurostat and Accenture indicate that Ireland lies at 13 out of 22 countries surveyed around the world.

It's not all bad news though because the bulletin indicates that the number of dot-ie domains is now close to 60,000, more than three times what it was at the height of the dotcom boom in the late 1990s. In addition, by mid-May, 23,996 dot-eu domains had been registered by Irish entities.

What's more, two percent of the Irish population now has more than one mobile phone and trends suggest that a 'telephony bloodbath' is likely to happen in the near future as the public begin to embrace VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) in Ireland.