IBEC urges Government to lead way on e-commerce

The Government should lead the way for Ireland to become a global centre for e-commerce by ensuring all its departments and agencies are easily accessible via the Internet, a new report has said.

The report, compiled by IBEC, the employers' lobby group, also says the Government and industry should work together to ensure that Internet-ready PCs are made available to homes at an attractive price.

IBEC's assistant director of enterprise with responsibility for telecoms, Mr Tommy McCabe, said all central and local government departments and agencies should have fully-functional, up-to-date and properly managed interactive websites by 2001. He was speaking following the publication of an IBEC report entitled Telecommunications After Liberalisation - Policies for Ireland.

"Ireland is still in catch-up mode in the telecoms sector - despite huge advances," said Dr George Young, chairman of IBEC's telecommunications policy committee. He said that in terms of telephone line penetration Ireland was still in the lowest quartile of the OECD countries and well below the OECD average. Ireland should aim to be in the top quarter by 2006.

Dr Young stressed that good telecommunications and adequate broadband capacity were vital if Ireland was to continue attracting multinational companies. He said it was also important for Ireland to have international telecoms players here to provide international connectivity to such companies.

Mr Terry Ralph, head of Informix and vice-chairman of IBEC's telecoms committee, said there had been "a big imbalance" in the development of telecoms and information technology generally in Ireland. He said a lot of telecoms companies were coming into Ireland to service big business. "But it is the smaller companies which are lagging behind in terms of PC penetration," he said.

Mr Ralph said IBEC would be pressing the Government to provide tax incentives for people who buy PCs and for their prices to be reduced. He also said the ultimate goal should be to have an Internet-ready PC on every secondary school desktop.