HOW did the main parliamentary parties react to the Information Society report? Or more precisely, what was the state of the debate on their Web sites by yesterday afternoon? Here's how they stood.
. http://www.iol.ie/fiannafail/policy.htm
Nothing. Zilch. Not a sausage. The policy section of the single largest party was totally blank last night, and a section on speeches hasn't been updated since January.
. http://www.indigo.ie/finegael/
Fine Gael says it is revamping its site. So as of last night it had no information - on anything. Unless you need its address.
. http://www.labour.ie/policy1.htm
"We're sorry but Micheal D. Higgins TD, Minister for the Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht will be unable to participate in the planned live chat session tonight."
The Minister might have skipped the online version of the party's conference at the weekend and the other pre election "Web cast" gimmicks at the recently redesigned Web site, but at least Labour had an online policy statement of sorts about the Forfas report.
. http://ireland.iol.ie/pd
The PDs have plenty of policy statements, but nothing about the report. An archive of press releases peters out a month ago with a document titled "Mary Harney to visit Sligo Leitrim".
. http://www.tiac.net/users/jimanne/index.html
Democratic Left's site has no reference to the document. Its pages are so out of date, dull and sparse that the www.tinet.ie "Doras" index gives it its lowest rating (one star). By contrast, Sinn Fein and the Green Party both have information rich sites, with a fair amount of page. Last night, though, neither appeared to contain any direct response to the report.