This article is from page 4 of the 2008-01-29 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 4 JPG
BUSINESS development in Clare is being hit by a lack of internet infra- structure, with the county lying on the poor end of a new Irish ‘digital divide’.
According to new information re- leased this week, Clare is one of a number of western counties which have a low levels of businesses using Internet-based sales and payments eKeu DBL Blohy
The ecommerce index, which was produced by ebay Ireland and its sis- ter company PayPal, is Ireland’s first
ever county by county breakdown of internet sales.
The index made poor reading for Clare which lagged well behind the likes of Dublin, Wicklow, Carlow and Laois.
The index was calculated based on the total amount of shopping car- ried out on ebay.ie throughout 2007. When adjustments were made for population size, the figures showed a wide east to west gap in term of take-up.
“In the past two years, most busi- nesses have developed some sort of web presence, but in terms of actu-
ally doing business over the internet, companies in the west seem to have been more reactionary that proac- tive,’ said Paul Montwill, of Ennis- based ebusiness solution experts, Magico.
“There is a real divide. Because the traffic 1s so bad in Dublin, a lot of businesses have caught on to online selling a lot quicker.
“Broadband is a major issue. It 1s a lot better in Dublin than in Clare and the west. That has led to a lot of people in Dublin getting into online shopping quicker than those outside of it.”
The ebay survey comes just days after Shannon Development Chief Executive, Kevin ‘Thompstone, called for an urgent Government in- vestment in the communications in- Ge-FOmeCCAbNKo
Mr Thompstone singled out Shan- non town as the location for a pilot Next Generation Networking (NGN) scheme in the western region.
The ecommerce index is_ based solely on ebay Ireland purchases and does not take into account whether Irish shoppers are using other shop- ping websites for their online pur- Ont Iene