'Irish Times' named best Irish website

Irishtimes.com has been named Ireland’s Best Website at the 2010 Realex Irish Web Awards.

The award was presented to online editor Hugh Linehan at a ceremony at the Mansion House in Dublin last night. It is the first time the website has won the overall prize, which was selected by a panel of 140 judges.

Irishtimes.com was also named Best Online Publication, beating competition from the Day & Night, Irish Examiner, Irish Independent and Cork Independent sites. This is the third year in a row that the site has won in this category.

“These awards are really heartening for all the people who’ve worked so hard on irishtimes.com over the past year,” said Linehan. “Winning Best Online Publication for the third time is welcome recognition for the fact that The Irish Times puts more effort and more resources into digital content than any other publication in Ireland. And being named Ireland’s best website shows how important our quality journalism is for online audiences. We look forward to continuing to build and improve on our digital content over the next year.”

Irish Web Awards organiser Damien Mulley congratulated irishtimes.com on its success.

"As well as being a consistent winner in the news category each year, The Irish Times was chosen as Grand Prix winner for a well-designed, open website which provides valuable information to Ireland and beyond,” he said. “Importantly, the blogging and Twitter interactions by Irish Times staff means it is a strong member of the Irish web community."

Other winners include State.ie, which was named Best Web Only Publication, and 98FM, which took the Best Radio Website award.

Arsenal fan’s website Arseblog was named Best Independent Podcaster, while Hostelworld was voted Best Videocaster.

Ragged Words won the Best Music Site prize and irishprocycling.com took the top award in the Sports Site category. Movies.ie was named Best Entertainment Website and the Abbey Theatre took the Best Arts Website prize.

The technology award went to Silicon Republic, Best New Web Application/Service was won by OnePage CRM and Safetext.ie was named Most Innovative Website.

The Most Beautiful Website in Ireland was ashleyoconnor.com, while the most useful was Citizens Information

More than 500 websites were nominated for the event, now in its third year.