The Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, is looking at the possibility of bringing forward the date on which Telecom Eireann's monopoly for voice telephony runs out.

Ireland has a derogation from liberalising the market for voice telephone services until January 1st, 2000 but it is understood that Ms O'Rourke may seek to open the market to full competition sooner.

The move follows recent criticism about the lack of progress in the Irish telecoms market from people like the head of IDA Ireland, Mr Kieran McGowan, and the chief executive of Forfas, Mr John Travers.

Concerns have been growing in industrial development circles of late that Ireland is slipping behind in the telecommunications league, particularly in areas such as broadband technology.

The news also follows weekend reports that Microsoft had decided to locate an Internet site in Britain because Telecom Eireann did not have the infrastructure to support the project.

They said the Mirror site, which duplicates the content of a site elsewhere, thereby taking pressure off the main site, would have served as an IDA flagship in the new communications technology market. However, the US software giant has said that it is considering a number of inter-related internet investments in Europe and Ireland remains on the list for such investment.

"Our evaluation of where to place our internet investment is ongoing and Ireland is on the list of places being considered for internet investment," Mr Kevin Dillon, Microsoft's general manager Europe, said. He said Microsoft's Mirror project had been located in Britain since its inception but it remained under consideration.

"We continue to evaluate whether that's the right place or whether we should put it somewhere else," he said.

Telecom Eireann denied that its lack of technical capacity was behind Microsoft's decision not to locate the internet site here.

"It's completely untrue," said Mr Gerry O'Sullivan, spokesman for Telecom Eireann.

"We put together a network architecture for them and they were happy with it."

Mr O'Sullivan also denied that Telecom did not have the broadband technology necessary for such a project.

He said Telecom Eireann would invest a total of £350 million this year, up from £180 million four years ago. Forfas had recently called for Telecom Eireann to provide 22 broadband switches but the company had already moved ahead with a plan to install 25 broadband switches this year and 10 were already installed while it has 40,000 kilometres of fibreoptic cable throughout the state.

"We haven't had a single case of any customer looking for broadband requirements we could not meet," he said.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Department of Public Enterprise said a working group was preparing a wide-ranging report on the whole telecoms area, including the issues of broadband technology, access and regulation.

The report, which he described as a blueprint for the future in the information technology area, is near completion and is expected to go to Cabinet in around a month's time.

"The Government, and particularly the Minister, are acutely aware of the need for investment in the whole telecommunications sector," the spokesman said.

"The report is all about the way forward, where we should be investing and the level of investment required."