In recent times, there has been a plethora of articles in the press on the growth in Internet use and its expected affect on the services industry. This leaves one to wonder what effect the growth in e-commerce will have on the Irish commercial property market.

At the recent Investment Property Forum's annual lunch, a top US property consultant warned that the explosive growth of the World Wide Web "threatens to end commercial property's once fundamental role in modern economic societies".

In his opinion, growth in e-commerce will dramatically affect service sector space requirements and will ultimately affect "insurance agents, mortgage brokers, property negotiators, bank employees, stockbrokers and car dealers".

The bleak future painted for the commercial property market by this consultant has since been highly contested by property experts worldwide. While the Web revolution is certain to make huge changes in the commercial property market in the years ahead, it is not expected to affect the amount of space being sought. It is more likely that changes will be in terms of the nature of space being sought and the nature of tenure sought.

While there are certainly threats to some industries, such as travel agencies, banks and book and music retailers, the e-commerce revolution will also offer many opportunities. The market will have to learn to adapt to the e-commerce revolution and develop what are now known in the industry as "clicks and mortar" strategies. In other words, in addition to adapting traditional physical stores to cater for clients' changing requirements, retailers will have to develop online services.

UK travel agents Lunn Poly, Going Places and Thomas Cook have recently set up their own Web sites while simultaneously upgrading their in-house IT systems and refurbishing their high street stores to make them more customer friendly.

Kenny's Bookshops and Easons are a good example of this strategy in operation in Ireland. They have both developed an excellent online ordering service while continuing to offer excellent service in their high street stores.

In an interesting move, a new shopping centre lease has just been devised in the UK whereby landlords will take a percentage rent based on a retailer's sales generated through its shopping centre store and also a percentage of any sales generated through the centre's Website. In this way, rent is being generated from multi-channel retailing.

While financial services may well be a sector that will be hard hit by the Internet boom, as customers increasingly communicate with banks online and buy financial services over the Net, call centres will continue to be necessary to process Internet bank accounts. Despite a recent scare in Britain, which predicted that e-commerce will ultimately damage the call centre market, it is my opinion that the Internet revolution will benefit the market.

A recent report issued in a UK property magazine wrongly stated that Oracle, the software company, had confirmed market fears that e-trade could spell the end for the call centre market.

The report stated that growth in sales on the Web had rendered its sales operation virtually obsolete and as a result, the software company had decided to close its direct marketing division in Dublin's Eastpoint Business Park. Eric Duffaut, managing director of Oracle DMD Europe, Middle East and Africa, has denied this. "E-business could affect call centres which provide basic services to customers, but this is not our business. We are a sales operation which provides account management over the telephone and the Web is already enabling our sales representatives to be more effective in servicing our customers remotely.

"If you want to succeed in e-commerce, you need strong customer service - this requires additional agents on the phone and is therefore a real opportunity for growth for Oracle DMD," he said.

There are currently 350,000 people employed in the call centre market in the UK, which is heavily reliant on selling goods and services, unlike Ireland, which has less than 10,000 people employed in the sector.

While the fear of call centres being affected by e-commerce may be justified in the UK, Irish call centres tend to service a pan-European market and many are major electronics and software companies that are less likely to suffer from the effects of e-trading.

In addition, the IDA has concentrated on attracting companies that provide a broad range of services.

Therefore it would appear that the chances of e-commerce having a detrimental effect on the call centre market in this country are unlikely as long as Ireland continues to keep ahead of technological advances.

There are currently about 75 Irish-based call centres and this is set to increase dramatically in the next decade - 40,000 additional call centres will be set up in Europe in the next three years.

Due to the shortage of language skills in Ireland, recruitment may increasingly take place overseas to staff the Irish-based call centres. According to the IDA, job skill shortages pose a larger threat to the call centre market than closures.

Marie Hunt is head of research at Gunne Property Consultants