Media website award won by ireland.com

The Internet portal site of The Irish Times on the Web, ireland.com, last night won the Best Media Website award at the Irish Business Internet Awards. The overall competition was organised by Web Ireland magazine, and the individual award won by ireland.com was sponsored by the .IE Domain Registry facility.

At the awards ceremony in Dublin last night, Mr Seamus Martin, editor of The Irish Times, Electronic Editions, told the invited audience of 500 people he regarded it "as recognition for the work of a very talented and dedicated team at ireland.com".

The award was presented by Dr Denis Jennings of .IE Domain Registry, to Ms Deirdre Veldon and Mr Conor Pope, senior journalists at The Irish Times on the Web, who accepted it on behalf of ireland.com and The Irish Times.

In her acceptance speech, Ms Veldon said: "We're delighted with the progress we've made since the launch of ireland.com in March, particularly in terms of growth of our home-based users.

"We are pleased with the increase in traffic - page impressions are now running at over seven million per month - but we're really delighted to see that significant growth has taken place in our home market, with 70 per cent of all subscribers to our free e-mail service based in Ireland," she said.

Presenting the keynote address at the ceremony, the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, called upon industry figures to have direct input into the introduction of a new Bill to establish a flexible legal framework for e-commerce in Ireland.

The award received by ireland.com was one of 14 prizes presented last night. Ms O'Rourke was presented with an award herself, winning the Web Ireland Annual Recognition Award. Other award winners included the GAA, the Bank of Ireland, the Golden Pages and Internet service provider Indigo.

The prize was a specially commissioned trophy in the shape of a Celtic spear. "The spear symbolises strength, leadership, target-orientation, dynamism and cutting edge. All the qualities we were looking for in the entrants to the awards," said Mr Stephen Finnegan, managing editor and publisher of Web Ireland.