Educational initiatives are vitally needed - now

Do we want a so-called "caring economy" - as Gerry McGovern of Nua has termed it - in this State? One in which technology enables people - everybody - not just the people who can afford to be enabled by it?

So far, the answer remains a resounding no. The Republic remains, incredibly at the very bottom of the European league in terms of the numbers of computers in homes and more shamefully, in schools. Government, please note: unless this changes very, very fast, the education system brandished at foreign multinationals so deliberately as a model of excellence by the Department of Public Enterprise, IDA Ireland

and others will become an anachronism. At this point, students are mostly forced to play quick catch-up at third level - technical colleges, universities, and through other training schemes. The time when this is adequate is passing. The State is now producing students who will have nearly no exposure to even the most basic of the new technologies needed in tomorrow's careers until they enter their teens. Unless their parents can afford a home computer. Likewise, many other groups remain on the far side of a silicon wall that is quickly determining who can participate in society and who cannot. Add to this the fact that for many people - those in isolated rural areas, those who work much of the day in the home, those who have physical and mental disabilities - a computer and Internet connection opens up whole new worlds of communication and education. In the case of people with certain physical disabilities, a computer using specially designed software or a typing device can make fluent communication possible for the first time in their lives, and release them into a Net world where no one sees a disability and therefore, makes prejudgments. Computers and an Internet connection can open doors that have remained firmly closed for many segments of society. This is paid lip service from time to time by those who control the purse strings, yet the State still has few wired libraries, few schools with more than a handful of computers and as far as I know, no Internet access points in Government offices or public places such as post offices. A few groups, such as the Information Society Commission, push for such things, but the overall Government (and private industry) reaction has been slow, slow, slow.

A recent conference at Dublin Castle, entitled Social Aspects of Internet Development in Ireland, pointed out both the concerns, the possibilities and the successes of attempts to make the Net more socially inclusive. Mr Dermot McCarthy, assistant secretary to the Taoiseach, made some cogent points in an opening address which, one hopes, will be taken on board generally by Government. "We are a society as well as an economy," he said, noting that with the capabilities of new technology, "We have a chance in public policy to redress recurring issues of poverty and exclusion." Researcher Nualan O'Brien of WRC Social and Economic Consultants reminded people that good, creative projects were already under way. Projects that have linked women in rural areas through the Net, that have enabled disadvantaged children to work with computers, and that have opened up the Internet to people with disabilities - certainly, one of the most excluded of groups, because of woefully unresolved issues of access to public places.

But the continuing stark contrast between haves and have nots was underlined by Mr Mark Henry of Amarach, a Dublin Internet research consultancy: Irish people online do not mirror the broader population. Of Irish Net users, 45 per cent live in Dublin, 66 per cent are employed, 42 per cent are college graduates (yet only 18 per cent of the population are college graduates), 58 per cent fall into the ABC1 classification. Just 4 per cent are homemakers. Only 35 per cent of the population use PCs at all. Of the 10 per cent who say they will go online in the next year, this profile changes hardly at all, he said.

When people were asked where they accessed the Net, there was no evidence of public access points, he said (in the US, nearly 10 per cent of people use public access points, such as libraries). Tackling these social and educational problems here is not just a Government issue - the companies that want technically-literate employees in the future also need to invest. Large-scale public and private initiatives are imperative. Now. Karlin Lillington may be contacted at klillington@rish-times.ie