A new survey of Irish business Internet connectivity has found that e-mail use and website ownership is very low - much lower than thought before.
The survey found that only eight per cent of the 127,900 businesses surveyed in the Republic have an e-mail address. This figure drops to a mere five per cent of the 71,800 businesses surveyed in the North. Just 4.3 per cent of businesses in the Republic have their own website, and 3.7 per cent in the North.
The findings - of Dr Patrick Ibbotson and Mr Michael Smyth of the University of Ulster - are published in the current issue of the Irish Banking Review. They are drawn on the results of interviews conducted last September by IDS Media Group with 199,700 businesses across all sectors, locations and group sizes.
There have been several surveys of Internet use by businesses in Ireland in recent years, but they have been based on relatively small samples and differ immensely from the latest findings.
The Chambers of Commerce of Ireland's recent survey reported that seven out of every 10 SMEs in the Republic have Internet access and that one-third of businesses have their own website. Another survey suggested that 48 per cent of Northern Ireland businesses have Web access.
Internet connectivity, Dr Ibbotson and Mr Smyth have found, differs greatly between sectors and locations.
Larger businesses have higher connectivity rates in both regions. In the Republic 48.5 per cent of businesses employing 50 or more people have e-mail while 34 per cent have websites. Corresponding figures for the North are considerably less; 30 per cent of large businesses have e-mail and 25 per cent have websites.
The worrying trend is just one in every 50 micro enterprises have Internet access. Employing less than 10 people each, they account for almost 88 per cent of all businesses in the Republic and 86 per cent in the North.
The current issue of the Irish Banking Review also deals with the impact of so-called non-banks, or Internet banks on the market.
Although non-banks (a bank or credit institution which trades off a non-bank brand name, or has been formed by outsiders to the banking industry) like Egg, Sainsbury's and Tesco account for just one per cent of the market, they are still perceived as a threat to traditional banks.
According to Mr David Lascelles of the London-based Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation, they are not an isolated phenomenon but symptomatic of deep changes in the banking world and should be seen as new banking as opposed to non-banking.
