TYPE in the word "Ballina" on any powerful Internet search engine and you will get a list of about 3,000 documents. They include information on houses for sale in the northwest, a press release from Proinsias De Rossa about a visit to the north Mayo town, and an electronic tour of a tea tree plantation in Ballina, New South Wales.
The proliferation of Internet sites based in Ballina and elsewhere in Mayo is one visible sign that rural Ireland is quickly getting to grips with the information age. Another is the huge interest in Telecom Eireann's competition to become Ireland's Information Age Town.
A total of 46 towns with a population between 5,000 and 30,000 have entered the contest and a shortlist will shortly be announced. The lucky winner will benefit from a multimillion pound initiative which will wire up the entire community to the Internet and offer other advantages.
The project is designed to show the disadvantages of living in remote locations will become much less important in the future. Ballina is a case in point.
One of the major factors in the election campaign in Mayo was the perceived neglect of the town over a long number of years. Townspeople looked with envy at improvements on roads to Castlebar, and other outward signs that the county seat was getting the lion's share of available funds.
Ballina's entry in the Telecom competition argues that it is ideally placed to demonstrate the benefits the information age will bring to communities on the edge. "We believe we can transform Ballina, overcoming its geographic isolation and peripherality with worldwide information technology connectivity, bypassing the limitations of secondary roads with IT highways and demonstrating to Ireland and the world that the disadvantages of distance and remoteness are there to be conquered by communications technology," it says.
It points out that the first email address in the town dates as far back as 1989. At that time Sr Attractra Tighe, principal of St Mary's Secondary School, pioneered a pilot IT Eurostudies programme in the school. Since then, the school has adapted the programme several times, and it now links 400 schools across Europe.
The submission sets a number of goals, which if achieved would allow all the people of Ballina to become as familiar with the Internet as they are with the telephone. The development of online shopping and electronic links to the local library are planned, and the provision of on street Internet access points for the general public.
Another suggestion would involve the North Connacht Farmers Co Operative. It proposes to pioneer an information system that would give farmers access to the most up to date information on milk volumes, quotas, artificial insemination, fertilisers and other aspects of the business.
The submission also tackles head on a perception that the west is somehow less suitable as a base for some of the high tech computer jobs that have been flowing to the east coast in recent years, because of a supposed scarcity" of qualified graduates.
This argument formed part of the IDA's defence of its record in recent months, when it was criticised by various groups in the west. It was also enunciated recently in a letter from the outgoing Minister of Finance, Ruairi Quinn, to an industrialist in Killala.
Mr Quinn wrote: "It is a fact that many foreign investors want to establish in cities for reasons such as the availability of a large labour pool with the required qualifications, access to educational facilities, high levels of services, telecommunication facilities and access to transport facilities".
He pointed out that the increasing number of young entrants to the labour force had a significant impact on overall unemployment figures. "However, I do agree that a great many people move to Dublin from other areas to work, though this in itself is not a matter of concern."
The Ballina submission points out that participation in third level education in the area is very high. Each year an average of 500 students complete second level education in the town and its hinterland. Of these over 80 per cent go on to do further courses or training schemes.
Figures from four schools last year show that almost 20 per cent of school leavers went on to engineering and science or computer related third level disciplines. Almost another 30 per cent went on to courses in arts, business or professional studies.
These statistics show that Ballina supplies the labour market with a substantial number of skilled young people in a range of vocations every year. The number who return to Ballina from Dublin each weekend - estimated as the equivalent of 23 busloads every Friday - shows just where they go to find jobs.
In this context, the argument about a "scarcity" of skilled graduates in the west appears rather thin.