Ms Mary Mangan, chief operating officer of ireland.com - The Irish Times website - won the Significant Contribution to the Internet Award at the Golden Spiders Irish Internet Awards which were held at a ceremony in Dublin city last night.

Ms Mangan, who previously worked as managing director of Buy and Sell.net and PostGEM and the Ireland Online group, joined ireland.com in May 2001.

Since joining The Irish Times online division, Ms Mangan has overseen a major redesign of the ireland.com website and has introduced a new subscription service to generate extra revenue.

"I am absolutely delighted to receive this award. But I wouldn't be receiving it if it wasn't for the dedication and professionalism of the entire ireland.com team over the course of the last year," she said.

The awards, which have been running for six years, attracted entries from more than 1,800 websites in the Republic. Awards were made to sites in a number of categories including best financial website, best recruitment website and best e-commerce award.

The first free interactive education website for students, teachers and parents, skoool.ie, won best .ie website, which was sponsored by the IE Domain Registry. The free site was developed by The Irish Times, Intel and AIB.

The site www.hostelworld.com won two awards, including the Esat BT sponsors award and the best e-commerce award. Best finance site was won by www.fxcentre.com.

The awards were organised by dot.ie magazine and sponsored by Esat BT.