START-UPS established by those made redundant likely played a significant role in the increase in .ie domain registrations in 2011, according to the chief executive of Ireland’s domain registry body.

The IE Domain Registry had 39,398 registrations in 2011, according to its annual report, released yesterday. This is an increase of almost 10 per cent on 2010, representing the Irish domain’s strongest year to date.

“Against a backdrop of a difficult economy for small businesses, I’ll be honest and say I was a little surprised to see we were bucking the trend,” said IEDR chief executive David Curtin, who said the high number of redundancies in 2011 almost certainly played a role in the results.

“For somebody starting up now, they’re starting online first before they even think about doing anything offline, he said.

However, the registry’s report signals the need for caution, with registrations for the first two quarters of 2012 down year-on-year.

Mr Curtin said the recent slowdown in layoffs is likely responsible for the reduction. Company liquidations are also a factor in the number of domains let lapse.

Despite this, Mr Curtin is relatively optimistic about the year ahead. The number of .ie domains is still increasing, he said, while costs at IEDR have also been keep under control.

He said the country is still dealing with the legacy of bad regulation in the telecoms sector, which created an uncompetitive broadband market and, in turn, a slow adoption of e-commerce.

“The internet ecosystem didn’t mature as quickly as in other places and ultimately that can be put at the door of ComReg. There’s a huge amount of work still to be done: we’re still trying to figure out what the issue is with small businessmen and what is stopping them going online,” he said.

One unknown quantity that may make the registry’s job harder is the imminent introduction of generic domains, which will likely see hundreds of new domain types becoming commercially available.