The global communications revolution is changing the shape of the world economy. Dramatic advances in technology and the development of the Internet as a platform for electronic commerce are at the heart of this revolution. Within 2/3 years the Internet will have created a single market of over 300 million computer-based consumers world-wide. The scale of growth forecast for electronic commerce is phenomenal. Today, such transactions are worth $22 bn per annum. The value of these transactions is expected to have risen to $350bn per annum, by the Year 2002.

Irish business, whether indigenous or foreign owned, must be at the heart of this revolution and access to competitively priced broadband telecommunications infrastructure, not only within Ireland but also connected to the global broadband telecommunications networks, is a prerequisite for Ireland's future economic well-being.

In this regard, the Government decided last year to accelerate liberalisation and competition in the telecommunications sector. The Government also decided to establish a public-private consortium to negotiate with submarine cable providers to extend to Ireland significant additional bandwidth capacity which would be connected to the global telecommunications infrastructure.

The magnitude of the economic opportunities afforded by the advances in telecommunications technologies, including broadband, has pushed the Information Society and electronic commerce issues to the forefront of the Government's agenda and I am determined that Irish business will be well positioned to reap the rewards from these developments. Electronic commerce businesses will tend to be attracted to those countries with low cost, high quality telecommunications and Internet services, good business and legal environments for electronic commerce and highly skilled workforces.

Specifically, we must create a facilitatory regime for electronic commerce so as to:

• retain existing businesses which have or which could develop a high telecommunications or Internet dependence,
• promote Ireland's reputation as an attractive location for investment particularly in leading edge electronic commerce projects,
• foster organic growth of strong indigenous electronic commerce companies and the creation of higher added-value, knowledge-intensive, better-paid jobs and
• enhance and underpin the competitiveness of Irish business generally in the face of its competitors elsewhere who are also exploiting the potential of electronic commerce.

Based on an advanced telecommunication network with global connectivity, and a proper facilitatory regime our goal is to position Ireland as a significant hub for electronic commerce activity early in the new millennium.

Ireland's position in the Global Information Society should not solely be defined by its economic success. The information Society is about people and should be used by people to improve their quality of life. This could be by buying goods and services on the internet, using electronic mail to speak to friends world-wide or downloading information any topic imaginable.

We must ensure that measures be put in place so that the benefits of the Information Age are available to the widest possible range of people and organisations, and to facilitate rapid development of electronic commerce.

In the area of public service reform and improved service delivery, Information Communication Technologies have an increasingly important role to play. The putting in place of appropriate and complementary operational mechanisms, which facilitate access to electronic commerce and the Information Society in general, will contribute to improved efficiency and performance in the area of public service delivery and can assist in creating greater social inclusion.

Access should be addressed at a national level in terms of physical access to the devices and networks necessary to participate in the Information Society and, more importantly, in terms of the skills and confidence levels of the potential users of services. In particular, the needs of the socially excluded should be addressed in order to prevent the growth of a gap between the "information rich" and the "information poor".

The general levels of personal computer ownership and internet access in Ireland are amongst the lowest in the developed countries. This is a potential obstacle to the development of the Information Society in Ireland. Corrective measures are needed in order to stimulate consumer awareness, to increase the potential to participate in electronic commerce and electronic public services and to reinforce signals to outside investors that Ireland has moved forward technologically. These measures will need to address both the provision of alternative access points and the scope for improving access from within the home.

Measures to provide access outside the home are necessary if we are to ensure that access to the Information Society is available to citizens in an equitable and socially inclusive manner. The public library service provides a valuable medium: there are 320 public libraries throughout the country and librarians, with their experience and training in handling information and dealing with the public, would be particularly suited to the role of guiding and assisting the public in the use of the technology.

Community and voluntary agencies already serving local needs have also been identified as having an important role to play in providing access for the less privileged sectors of society. Some progress has already been made in terms of providing computer facilities to these agencies as part of the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs' community and voluntary sector development programme. However, a more accelerated and focused programme to make computer and internet facilities, together with appropriate training, available to these agencies would be of immense benefit from the viewpoint of social inclusion in the Information Society, as well as improving the resources of these agencies and their ability to serve their clients more generally.

Increased use of ICT's by Government and public administration will have a number of benefits in the provision of modern and inclusive public as services. Firstly, it will lead to improved delivery of service as better services can be delivered to a wider range of customers at greater speed and lower cost. Secondly, it will act as a catalyst for the uptake of ICT's in the economy and society generally, leading to corresponding improvements in efficiency and performance there. Finally, it will act as an important indication of the Government's commitment to the development of the Information Society.

At the same time, increased use of these technologies in the development and delivery of public services will contribute to their acceptability and use by other sectors, thus compounding the rate at which they are developed and deployed in our society. This can have enormous benefits for society at large, particularly where products and services are developed beyond the mainstream business sector, and potentially offers enormous advances in the area of social inclusion as improved services are made available by non-governmental agencies, voluntary organisations etc.

Similarly, there is an important linkage between the provision of modern and efficient public services and the objective of establishing Ireland as a key centre in the global electronic commerce market. In the world of electronic communication it will take more than just infrastructure to establish Ireland as a key centre - the overall environment for business and administration will also be taken into the equation by mobile companies. In addition, the perception and reputation of Ireland as a country with modern and efficient public services which use state of the art technologies, and with a population which is increasingly at ease with such technologies, will reinforce its attractiveness to companies seeking a suitable centre from which to operate their European, or indeed global, business.